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VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 


By  the  Same  Author 
THE  WAR  AND  CULTURE 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 


A  BOOK  OF 
LITERARY  DEVOTIONS 


BY 

JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

Staff  Lecturer  on  Literature  for  Oxford  University  Extension 

Delegacy.     Education  Department  Free  City  of  Hamburg. 

Verein  fuer  Neucre  Philologie,  Dresden  and  Leipzig. 

University     Lecturers'    Association,     New     York 


Ham. — Would  not  this,  sir,  and  a  forest  of  feathers — if 
the  rest  of  my  fortunes  turn  Turk  with  me — with  two  Provin- 
cial roses  on  my  raz'd  shoes,  get  me  a  fellowship  in  a  cry 
of  players,  sir? 

Hor. — Half  a  share. 


NEW  YORK 
G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

1735  Grand  Central  Terminal 


LONDON 

WILLIAM  RIDER  &  SON,  Ltd 
8-11  Paternoster  Row,   E.  C. 

1915 


Copyright,  1915,  by  G.  Arnold  Shaw 


Copyright  in  Great  Britain  and  Colonies 


BROOKLYN    EAGLE   PRESS 


vol../ 


I 
I 

To  Those  who  love 

Without  understanding; 
To  Those  who  understand 
o    .  Without  loving; 

And  to  Those 
^  Who,  neither  loving  or  understanding, 

JD  Are  the  Cause 

=c  Why  Books  are  written. 


3 
>  CO 


CONTENTS 


Preface    9 

Rabelais    25 

Dante  35 

Shakespeare 55 

El  Greco  75 

Milton   87 

Charles  Lamb   105 

Dickens   119 

Goethe  135 

Matthew  Arnold 153 

Shelley   169 

Keats    183 

Nietzsche    197 

Thomas  Hardy 213 

Walter  Pater  227 

Dostoievsky    241 

Edgar  Allen  Poe   263 

Walt  Whitman   ; 281 

Conclusion   293 


PREFACE 

HAT  I  aim  at  in  this  book  is  little 
more  than  to  give  complete  reflec- 
tion to  those  great  figures  in  Liter- 
ature which  have  so  long  obsessed 
me.  This  poor  reflection  of  them  passes,  as 
they  pass,  image  by  image,  eidolon  by  eidolon, 
in  the  flowing  stream  of  my  own  conscious- 
ness. 

Most  books  of  critical  essays  take  upon 
themselves,  in  unpardonable  effrontery,  to 
weigh  and  judge,  from  their  own  petty  sub- 
urban pedestal,  the  great  Shadows  they  re- 
view. It  is  an  insolence!  How  should  Pro- 
fessor This,  or  Doctor  That,  whose  furthest 
experiences  of  "dangerous  living"  have  been 
squalid  philanderings  with  their  neighbours' 
wives,  bring  an  Ethical  S3mthesis  to  bear  that 
shall  put  Shakespeare  and  Hardy,  Milton  and 
Rabelais,  into  appropriate  niches? 

Every  critic  has  a  right  to  his  own  Aes- 
thetic Principles,  to  his  own  Ethical  Convic- 
tions; but  when  it  comes  to  applying  these,  in 
tiresome,  pedantic  agitation,  to  Edgar  Allen 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Poe  and  Charles  Lamb,  we  must  beg  leave  to 
cry  off!  What  we  want  is  not  the  formulating 
of  new  Critical  Standards,  and  the  dragging 
in  of  the  great  masters  before  our  last  miser- 
able Theory  of  Art.  What  we  want  is  an 
honest,  downright  and  quite  personal  articu- 
lation, as  to  how  these  great  things  in  litera- 
ture really  hit  us  when  they  find  us  for  the 
moment  natural  and  off  our  guard — when 
they  find  us  as  men  and  women,  and  not  as 
ethical  gramaphones. 

My  own  object  in  these  sketches  is  not  to 
convert  the  reader  to  whatever  "opinions"  I 
may  have  formulated  in  the  course  of  myi 
spiritual  adventures;  it  is  to  divest  myself  of 
such  "opinions,"  and  in  pure,  passionate  hu- 
mility to  give  myself  up,  absolutely  and  com- 
pletely, to  the  various  visions  and  tempera- 
ments of  these  great  dead  artists. 

There  is  an  absurd  notion  going  about, 
among  those  half-educated  people  who  fre- 
quent Ethical  Platforms,  that  Literary  Criti- 
cism must  be  "constructive."  O  that  word 
"constructive" !  How,  in  the  name  of  the 
mystery  of  genius,  can  criticism  be  anything 
else  than  an  idolatry,  a  worship,  a  metamor- 
phosis, a  love  affair!  The  pathetic  mistake 
these  people  make  is  to  fancy  that  the  great 
artists  only  lived  and  wrote  in  order  to  but- 
tress up  such  poor  wretches  as  they  are  upon 
the  particular  little,  thin,  cardboard  platform 

10 


^' 


PREFACE 

which  is  at  present  their  moral  security  and 
refuge. 

No  one  has  a  right  to  be  a  critic  whose  mind 
cannot,  with  Protean  receptivity,  take  first 
one  form  and  then  another,  as  the  great  Spells, 
one  by  one,  are  thrown  and  withdrawn. 

Who  wants  to  know  what  Professor  So- 
and-so's  view  of  Life  may  be?  We  want  to 
use  Professor  So-and-so  as  a  Mirror,  as  a 
Medium,  as  a  Go-Between,  as  a  Sensitive 
Plate,  so  that  we  may  once  more  get  the  thrill 
of  contact  with  this  or  that  dead  Spirit.  He 
must  keep  his  temperament,  our  Critic;  his 
peculiar  angle  of  receptivity,  his  capacity  for 
personal  reaction.  But  it  is  the  reaction  of 
his  own  natural  nerves  that  we  require,  not 
the  pallid,  second-hand  reaction  of  his  tedious, 
formulated  opinions.  Why  cannot  he  see  that, 
as  a  natural  man,  physiologically,  nervously, 
temperamentally,  pathologically  different  from 
other  men,  he  is  an  interesting  spectacle, 
as  he  comes  under  the  influence  first  of  one 
great  artist  and  then  another,  while  as  a  silly, 
little,  preaching  school-master,  he  is  only  a 
blot  upon  the  world-mirror! 

It  is  thus  that  I,  moi  qui  vous  parle,  claim 
my  humble  and  modest  role.  If,  in  my  reac- 
tion from  Rabelais,  for  instance,  I  find  myself 
responding  to  his  huge  laughter  at  "love"  and 
other  things,  and  a  moment  later,  in  my  re- 
action   from    Thomas    Hardy,    feeling    as    if 

11 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

"love"  and  the  rest  were  the  only  important 
matters  in  the  Universe;  this  psychological 
variability,  itself  of  interest  as  a  curious  hu- 
man phenomenon,  has  made  it  possible  to  get 
the  "reflections,"  each  absolute  in  its  way,  of 
the  two  great  artists  as  they  advance  and  re- 
cede. 

If  I  had  tried  to  dilute  and  prune  and  "cor- 
rect" the  one,  so  as  to  make  it  "fit  in"  with  the 
other,  in  some  stiff,  ethical  theory  of  my  own, 
where  would  be  the  interest  for  the  reader? 
Besides,  who  am  I  to  "improve"  upon  Rabe- 
lais? 

It  is  because  so  many  of  us  are  so  limited  in 
our  capacity  for  "variable  reaction"  that  there 
are  so  few  good  critics.  But  we  are  all,  I 
think,  more  multiple-souled  than  we  care  to 
admit.  It  is  our  foolish  pride  of  consistency, 
our  absurd  desire  to  be  "constructive,"  that 
makes  us  so  dull.  A  critic  need  not  necessa- 
rily approach  the  world  from  the  "pluralistic" 
angle;  but  there  must  be  something  of  such 
"pluralism"  in  his  natural  temper,  or  the 
writers  he  can  respond  to  will  be  very  few! 

Let  it  be  quite  plainly  understood.  It  is  im- 
possible to  respond  to  a  great  genius  halfway. 
It  is  a  case  of  all  or  nothing.  If  you  lack  the 
courage,  or  the  variability,  to  go  all  the  way 
with  very  different  masters,  and  to  let  your 
constructive  consistency  take  care  of  itself,  you 
may  become,  perhaps,  an  admirable  moralist; 

12 


PREFACE 

you  will  never  be  a  clairvoyant  critic.  All  this 
having  been  admitted,  it  still  remains  that  one 
has  a  right  to  draw  out  from  the  great  writers 
one  loves  certain  universal  aesthetic  tests, 
with  which  to  discriminate  between  modern 
productions. 

But  even  such  tests  are  personal  and  rela- 
tive. They  are  not  to  be  foisted  on  one's  read- 
ers as  anything  "ex  cathedra."  One  such  test 
is  the  test  of  what  has  been  called  "the  grand 
style" — that  grand  style  against  which,  as 
Arnold  says,  the  peculiar  vulgarity  of  our  race 
beats  in  vain!  I  do  not  suppose  I  shall  be  ac- 
cused of  perverting  my  devotion  to  the  "grand 
style"  into  an  academic  "narrow  way," 
through  which  I  would  force  every  writer  I 
approach.  Some  most  winning  and  irresisti- 
ble artists  never  come  near  it. 

And  yet — what  a  thing  it  is!  And  with 
what  relief  do  we  return  to  it,  after  the  "wal- 
lowings"  and  "rhapsodies,"  the  agitations  and 
prostitutions,  of  those  who  have  it  not! 

It  is — one  must  recognize  that — the  thing, 
and  the  only  thing,  that,  in  the  long  run,  ap- 
peals. It  is  because  of  the  absence  of  it  that 
one  can  read  so  few  modern  writers  twice! 
They  have  flexibility,  originality,  cleverness, 
insight — but  they  lack  distinction — they  fatal- 
ly lack  distinction. 

And  what  are  the  elements,  the  qualities, 
that  go  to  make  up  this  "grand  style"  ? 

13 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Let  nie  first  approach  the  matter  negatively. 
There  are  certain  things  that  cannot — because 
of  something  essentially  ephemeral  in  them — 
be  dealt  with  in  the  grand  style. 

Such  are,  for  instance,  our  modern  contro- 
versies about  the  problem  of  Sex.  We  may  be 
Feminists  or  Anti-Feminists — what  you  will 
— and  we  may  be  able  to  throw  interesting 
light  on  these  complicated  relations,  but  we 
cannot  write  of  them,  either  in  prose  or  poetry, 
in  the  grand  style,  because  the  whole  discus- 
sion is  ephemeral ;  because,  with  all  its  gravity, 
it  is  irrelevant  to  the  things  that  ultimately 
matter ! 

Such,  to  take  another  example,  are  our  elab- 
orate arguments  about  the  interpretation,  ethi- 
cal or  otherwise,  of  Christian  Doctrine.  We 
can  be  very  entertaining,  very  moral,  very  elo- 
quent, very  subtle,  in  this  particular  sphere; 
but  we  cannot  deal  with  it  in  the  "great  style," 
because  the  permanent  issues  that  really  count 
lie  out  of  reach  of  such  discussion  and  remain 
unaffected  by  it. 

Let  me  make  myself  quite  clear.  Hector 
and  Andromache  can  talk  to  one  another  of 
their  love,  of  their  eternal  parting,  of  their 
child,  and  they  can  do  this  in  the  great  style; 
but  if  they  fell  into  dispute  over  the  particular 
sex  conventions  that  existed  in  their  age,  they 
might  be  attractive  still,  but  they  would  not  be 
uttering  words  in  the  "great  style. 

14 


>> 


PREFACE 

Matthew  Arnold  may  argue  eloquently 
about  the  true  modernistic  interpretation  of 
the  word  "Elohim,"  and  very  cleverly  and  wit- 
tily give  his  reasons  for  translating  it  "the 
Eternal"  or  "the  Shining  One";  but  into  what 
a  different  atmosphere  we  are  immediately 
transported  when,  in  the  midst  of  such  discus- 
sion, the  actual  words  of  the  Psalmist  return 
to  our  mind:  ''My  soul  is  athirst  for  God — 
yea!  even  for  the  living  God!  When  shall  I 
come  to  appear  before  the  presence  of  God?" 

The  test  is  always  that  of  Permanence,  and 
of  immemorial  human  association.  It  is,  at 
bottom,  nothing  but  human  association  that 
makes  the  great  style  what  it  is.  Things  that 
have,  for  centuries  upon  centuries,  been  asso- 
ciated with  human  pleasures,  human  sorrows, 
and  the  great  recurrent  dramatic  moments  of 
our  lives,  can  be  expressed  in  this  style;  and 
only  such  things.  The  great  style  is  a  sort  of 
organic,  self-evolving  work  of  art,  to  which 
the  innumerable  units  of  the  great  human  fam- 
ily have  all  put  their  hands.  That  is  why  so 
large  a  portion  of  what  is  written  in  the  great 
style  is  anonymous — like  Homer  and  much  of 
the  Bible  and  certain  old  ballads  and  songs. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  Walter  Pater  is  right 
when  he  says  that  the  important  thing  in  Re- 
ligion is  the  Ceremony,  the  Lifany,  the  Ritual, 
the  Liturgical  Chants,  and  not  the  Creeds  or 
the  Commandments,  or  discussion  upon  Creed 

15 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

or  Commandment.  Creeds  change,  Morality 
changes,  Mysticism  changes.  Philosophy 
changes — but  the  Word  of  our  God — the 
Word  of  Humanity — in  gesture,  in  ritual,  in 
the  heart's  natural  crying — abideth  forever! 

Why  do  the  eloquent  arguments  of  an  ethi- 
cal orator,  explaining  to  us  our  social  duties, 
go  a  certain  way  and  never  go  further,  where- 
as we  have  only  to  hear  that  long-drawn  Vox 
Humana,  old  as  the  world — older  certainly 
than  any  creed — "Santa  Maria,  Mater  Dei, 
ora  pro  nobis  peccatoribus,  nunc  et  in  hora 
mortis  nostra" — and  we  are  struck,  disarmed, 
pierced  to  the  marrow,  smitten  to  the  bone, 
shot  through,  "Tutto  tremente?"  Because 
arguments  and  reasoning;  because  morality 
and  logic,  are  not  of  the  nature  of  the  "great 
style,"  while  the  cry — "save  us  from  eternal 
death!" — addressed  by  the  passion  and  re- 
morse and  despair  of  our  human  heart  to  the 
unhearing  Universe,  takes  that  great  form  as 
naturally  as  a  man  breathes. 

Why,  of  all  the  religious  books  in  the  world, 
have  "the  Psalms  of  David,"  whether  in  He- 
brew or  Latin  or  English,  touched  men's  souls 
and  melted  and  consoled  them  ?  They  are  not 
philosophical.  They  are  not  logical.  They  are 
not  argumentative.  They  are  not  moral.  And 
yet  they  break  our  hearts  with  their  beauty 
and  their  appeal! 

It    is    the    same    with    certain    well-known 


16 


PREFACE 

words.  Is  it  understood,  for  instance,  why  the 
word  "Sword"  is  always  poetical  and  in  "the 
grand  style,"  while  the  word  "Zeppelin"  or 
"Submarine"  or  "Gatling  gun"  or  "Howitzer" 
can  only  be  introduced  by  Free  Versifiers, 
who  let  the  "grand  style"  go  to  the  Devil? 
The  word  "Sword,'  like  the  word  "Plough," 
has  gathered  about  it  the  human  associations 
of  innumerable  centuries,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  utter  it  without  feeling  something  of  their 
pressure  and  their  strain.  The  very  existence 
of  the  "grand  style"  is  a  protest  against  any 
false  views  of  "progress"  and  "evolution." 
Man  may  alleviate  his  lot  in  a  thousand  direc- 
tions; he  may  build  up  one  Utopia  after  an- 
other; but  the  grand  style  will  still  remain; 
will  remain  as  the  ultimate  expression  of  those 
aspects  of  his  life  that  cannot  change — while 
he  remains  Man. 

If  there  is  any  unity  in  these  essays,  it  will 
be  found  in  a  blurred  and  stammered  attempt 
to  indicate  how  far  it  may  be  possible,  in  spite 
of  the  limitations  of  our  ordinary  nature,  to 
live  in  the  light  of  the  "grand  style."  I  do  not 
mean  that  we — the  far-off  worshippers  of 
these  great  ones — can  live  as  they  thought  and 
felt.  But  I  mean  that  we  can  live  in  the  atmos- 
phere, the  temper,  the  mood,  the  attitude  to- 
wards things,  which  "the  grand  style"  they 
use  evokes  and  sustains. 

I  want  to  make  this  clear.    There  are  a  cer- 


17 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

tain  number  of  solitary  spirits  moving  among 
us  who  have  a  way  of  troubling  us  by  their 
aloofness  from  our  controversies,  our  disputes, 
our  arguments,  our  "great  problems."  We 
call  them  Epicures,  Pagans,  Heathen,  Egoists, 
Hedonists,  and  Virtuosos.  And  yet  not  one  of 
these  words  exactly  fits  them.  What  they  are 
really  doing  is  living  in  the  atmosphere  and 
the  temper  of  "the  grand  style" — and  that  is 
why  they  are  so  irritating  and  provocative! 
To  them  the  most  important  thing  in  the  world 
is  to  realize  to  the  fullest  limit  of  their  con- 
sciousness what  it  means  to  be  born  a  Man. 
The  actual  drama  of  our  mortal  existence,  re- 
duced to  the  simplest  terms,  is  enough  to  oc- 
cupy their  consciousness  and  their  passion.  In 
this  sphere — in  the  phere  of  the  "inevitable 
things"  of  human  life — everything  becomes 
to  them  a  sacrament.  Not  a  symbol — be  it 
noted — but  a  Sacrament!  The  food  they  eat; 
the  wine  they  drink;  their  waking  and  sleep- 
ing; the  hesitancies  and  reluctances  of  their 
devotions;  the  swift  anger  of  their  recoils  and 
retreats;  their  long  loyalties;  their  savage  re- 
versions; their  sudden  "lashings  out";  their 
hate  and  their  love  and  their  affection;  the 
simplicities  of  these  everlasting  moods  are  in 
all  of  us — become,  every  one  of  them,  matters 
of  sacramental  efficiency.  To  regard  each  day, 
as  it  dawns,  as  a  "last  day,"  and  to  make  of  its 
sunrise,  of  its  noon,  of  its  sun-setting,  a  rhyth- 

18 


PREFACE 

inic  antiphony  to  the  eternal  gods — this  is  to 
hve  in  the  spirit  of  the  "grand  style."  It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  "right"  or  "wrong." 
Saints  may  practise  it,  and  sometimes  do.  Sin- 
ners often  practise  it.  The  whole  thing  con- 
sists in  growing  vividly  conscious  of  those 
moods  and  events  which  are  permanent  and 
human,  as  compared  with  those  other  moods 
and  events  w^hich  are  transitory  and  unimpor- 
tant. 

When  a  man  or  woman  experiences  desire, 
lust,  hate,  jealousy,  devotion,  admiration,  pas- 
sion, they  are  victims  of  the  eternal  forces, 
that  can  speak,  if  they  will,  in  "the  great 
style."  When  a  man  or  woman  "argues"  or 
"explains"  or  "moralizes"  or  "preaches,"  they 
are  the  victims  of  accidental  dust-storms, 
which  rise  from  futility  and  return  to  vanity. 
That  is  why  Rhetoric,  as  Rhetoric,  can  never 
be  in  the  great  style.  That  is  why  certain 
great  revolutionary  Anarchists,  those  who 
have  the  genius  to  express  in  words  their  he- 
roic defiance  of  "the  something  rotten  in  Den- 
mark," move  us  more,  and  assume  a  grander 
outline,  than  the  equally  admirable,  and  pos- 
sibly more  practical,  arguments  of  the  Scien- 
tific Socialists.  It  is  the  eternal  appeal  we 
want,  to  what  is  basic  and  primitive  and  un- 
dying in  our  tempestuous  human  nature! 

The  sfrand  stvle  announces  and  commands. 
It  weeps  and  it  pleads.     It  utters  oracles  and 

19 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

it  wrestles  with  angels.  It  never  apologises; 
it  never  rationalizes;  and  it  never  explains. 
That  is  why  the  great  ineffable  passages  in 
the  supreme  masters  take  us  by  the  throat  and 
strike  us  dumb.  Deep  calls  unto  Deep  in  them, 
and  our  heart  listens  and  is  silent.  To  "do 
good  scientific  thinking"  in  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity has  its  well-earned  reward;  but  the 
gods  "throw  incense"  on  a  different  temper. 
The  "fine  issues"  that  reach  them,  in  their  re- 
moteness and  their  disdain,  are  the  "fine  is- 
sues" of  an  antagonist  worthy  of  their  own 
swift  wrath,  their  own  swift  vengeance,  and 
their  own  swift  love. 

The  ultimate  drama  of  the  world,  a  drama 
never-ending,  lies  between  the  children  of 
Zeus  and  the  children  of  Prometheus ;  between 
the  hosts  of  Jehovah  and  the  Sons  of  the 
Morning.  God  and  Lucifer  still  divide  the 
Stage,  and  in  Homer,  Shakespeare,  Dante, 
Milton,  and  Goethe  the  great  style  is  never 
more  the  great  style  than  when  it  brings  these 
eternal  Antagonists  face  to  face,  and  compels 
them  to  cross  swords.  What  matter  if,  in  re- 
ality, they  have  their  kingdoms  in  the  heart  of 
man  rather  than  the  Empyrean  or  Tartarus? 
The  heart  of  man,  in  its  unchangeable  charac- 
ter, must  ever  remain  the  true  Coliseum  of 
the  world,  where  the  only  interesting,  the  only 
dramatic,  the  only  beautiful,  the  only  classical 
things  are  born  and  turned  into  music! 

20 


PREFACE 

Beauty!  That  is  what  we  all,  even  the 
grossest  of  us,  in  our  heart  of  hearts  is  seek- 
ing. Lust  seeks  it;  Love  creates  it,  the  mir- 
acle of  Faith  finds  it — hut  nothing  less,  neither 
truth  or  wisdom  or  morality  or  knowledge, 
neither  progress  or  reaction,  can  quench  the 
thirst  we  feel. 


RABELAIS 


RABELAIS 

^^HERE  are  certain  great  writers  who 
make  their  critics  feel  even  as  chil- 
dren, who  picking-  up  stray  wreck- 
age and  broken  shells  from  the  edge 
of  the  sea  waves,  return  home  to  show  their 
companions  "what  the  sea  is  like." 

The  huge  suggestiveness  of  this  tremendous 
spirit  is  not  easy  to  communicate  in  the  space 
of  a  little  essay. 

But  something  can  be  done,  if  it  only  take 
the  form  of  modest  "advice  to  the  reader." 

Is  it  a  pity,  one  asks  oneself,  or  is  it  a  pro- 
found advantage,  that  enjoyment  of  Rabelais 
should  be  so  limited?  At  least  there  are  no 
false  versions  to  demolish  here — no  idealiza- 
tions to  unmask. 

The  reading  of  Rabelais  is  not  easy  to  every- 
one, and  perhaps  to  those  for  whom  it  is  least 
easy,  he  would  be  most  medicinal.  What  in 
this  mad  world,  do  we  lack,  my  dear  friends? 
Is  it  possibly  courage?  Well,  Rabelais  is,  of 
all  writers,  the  one  best  able  to  give  us  that 
courage.  If  only  we  had  courage,  how  the 
great  tides  of  existence  might  sweep  us  along 
— and  we  not  whine  or  wince  at  all ! 


25 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

To  read  Rabelais  is  to  gather,  as  if  from  the 
earth-gods,  spirit  to  endure  anything.     Nat- 
urally he  uses  wine,  and  every  kind  of  wanton 
liquor,  to  serve  as  symbols  of  the  intoxication 
he  would  produce.    For  we  must  be  "rendered 
drunk"  to  swallow  Life  at  this  rate — to  swal- 
low it  as  the  gods  swallow  it.     We  must  be 
drunk  but  not  mad.    For  in  the  spiritual  drunk- 
enness that  Rabelais  produces  there  is  not  the 
remotest  touch  of  insanity.     He  is  the  sanest 
of  all  the  great  writers ;  perhaps  the  only  sane 
one.     What  he  has  the  power  of  communicat- 
ing to  us  is  a  renewal  of  that  physiological 
energy,  which  alone  makes  it  possible  to  enjoy 
this  monstrous  world.    Other  writers  interpret 
things,  or  warn  us  against  things.     Rabelais 
takes  us  by  the  hand,  shows  us  the  cup  of  life, 
deep  as  eternity,  and  bids  us  drink  and  be  satis- 
fied.   What  else  could  he  use,  if  not  zvine,  as  a 
symbol  for  such  quenching  of  such  thirst.    And 
after  wine,  sex.    There  is  no  other  who  treats 
sex  as  Rabelais  does;  who  treats  it  so  com- 
pletely as  it  ought  to  be  treated ! 

Walt  Whitman  is  too  obsessed  by  it;  too 
grave  over  it — Rabelais  enjoys  it,  fools  with  it, 
plunges  into  it,  wallows  in  it;  and  then,  with 
multitudinous  laughter,  shakes  himself  free, 
and  bids  it  go  to  the  Devil ! 

The  world  will  have  to  come  to  this,  sooner 
or  later — to  the  confusion  of  the  vicious — and 
the  virtuous ! 


26 


RABELAIS 

The  virtuous  and  the  vicious  play  indeed  into 
each  others  hands ;  and  neither  of  them  love 
laughter.  Sexual  dalliance  is  either  too  seri- 
ous a  matter  to  be  mocked  by  satyr-laughter; 
or  it  is  too  sad  and  deplorable  to  be  laughed  at 
at  all.  In  a  few  hundred  years,  surely,  the 
human  race  will  recognize  its  absolute  right  to 
make  mock  at  the  grotesque  elements  in  the 
sex  comedy,  and  such  laughter  will  clear  the 
air  of  much  "virtue"  and  mi;ch  "vice." 

Wine  is  his  first  symbol  of  the  large,  sane, 
generous  mood  he  bequeaths  to  us — so  is  the 
focusing  of  the  poetry  of  life,  and  the  glow  and 
daring  of  it,  and  its  eternal  youthfulness. 

But  it  is  more  than  a  symbol — it  is  a  sacra- 
ment and  an  initiation.  It  is  the  sap  that  rises 
in  the  world's  recurrent  spring.  It  is  the  ichor, 
the  quintessence  of  the  creative  mystery.  It  is 
the  blood  of  the  sons  of  the  morning.  It  is  the 
dew  upon  the  paradisic  fields.  It  is  the  red- 
rose  light,  upon  the  feet  of  those  who  dance 
upon  graves.  Wine  is  a  sign  to  us  how  there 
is  required  a  certain  generous  and  sane  intoxi- 
cation, a  certain  large  and  equable  friendliness 
in  dealing  with  people  and  things  and  ideas.  It 
is  a  sign  that  the  earth  calls  aloud  for  the  pas- 
sionate dreamer.  It  is  a  sign  that  the  truth  of 
truth  is  not  in  labor  and  sorrow,  but  in  joy 
and  happiness.  It  is  a  sign  that  gods  and  men 
have  a  right  to  satisfy  their  hearts  desire, 
with  joy  and  pleasure  and  splendid  freedom. 

27 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

And  just  as  he  uses  wine,  so  he  uses  meat. 
Bread  that  strengtheneth  man's  heart  (and 
bologna,  sausages,  gammons  or  bacon,  or  what 
you  will,  else)  this  also  is  a  symbol  and  a  sacra- 
ment. And  it  is  indeed  more,  for  one  must 
remember  that  Rabelais  was  a  great  doctor  of 
medicine,  as  well  as  of  Utopian  Theology — and 
the  stomach,  with  the  wise  indulgence  thereof, 
is  the  final  master  of  all  arts !  Let  it  be  under- 
stood that  in  Rabelais  sex  is  treated  with  the 
same  reverence,  and  the  same  humor,  as  meat 
and  wine.  Why  not  ?  Is  not  the  body  of  man 
the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost?  It  is  not  sacro- 
sanct and  holy  within  and  without;  and  yet,  at 
the  same  time,  is  it  not  a  huge  and  palpable 
absurdity? 

Those  who  suffer  most  from  Rabelais'  man- 
ner of  treating  sex  are  the  incurably  vicious. 
The  really  evil  libidinous  people,  that  is  to  say 
the  spiteful,  the  mean,  the  base  and  inhuman, 
fly  from  his  presence,  and  for  the  obvious  rea- 
son that  he  makes  sex-pleasure  so  generous,  so 
gay,  so  natural,  so  legitimate,  that  their  dark 
morbid  perverted  natures  can  get  no  more  joy 
out  of  it.  Their  lust,  their  lechery,  is  a  cold 
dead  Saurian  thing,  a  thing  with  the  gravity 
of  a  slow-worm — and  when  this  great  laugh- 
ing and  generous  sage  comes  forth  into  the 
sunshine  with  his  noble  companies  of  amorous 
and  happy  people,  these  Shadow-lovers,  these 
Leut-Iovers,     these     Fleshly     Sentimentalists, 

28 


RABELAIS 

writhe  in  shame,  and  seek  refuge  in  a  deeper 
darkness.  How  strained  and  inhuman,  too; 
and  one  might  add,  how  mad  and  irrelevant — 
that  high,  cold,  disdainful  translunar  scorn 
with  which  the  "moral-immoralism"  of  Nietz- 
sche scourges  our  poor  flesh  and  blood.  One 
turns  with  relief  to  Zarathustra  after  associat- 
ing with  pious  people.  But,  after  Rabelais, 
even  that  terrific  psychologist  seems  contorted 
and  thin. 

For  after  all  it  is  generosity  that  we  cry  out 
for.  Courage  without  generosity  hugs  its 
knees  in  Hell. 

From  the  noble  pleasures  of  meat  and  drink 
and  sex,  thus  generously  treated ;  we  must  turn 
to  another  aspect  of  Rabelais'  work — his  pre- 
dilection for  excrement.  This  also,  though  few 
would  admit  it,  is  a  symbolic  secret.  This  also 
is  a  path  of  initiation.  In  this  peculiarity 
Rabelais  is  completely  alone  among  the  writers 
of  the  earth.  Others  have,  for  various  reasons, 
dabbled  in  this  sort  of  thing — but  none  have 
ever  piled  it  up — manure-heap  upon  manure- 
heap,  until  the  animal  refuse  of  the  whole  earth 
seems  to  reek  to  the  stars!  There  is  not  the 
slightest  reason  to  regret  this  thing  or  to  ex- 
purgate it.  Rabelais  is  not  Rabelais,  just  as 
life  is  not  life,  without  it. 

It  is  indeed  the  way  of  "salvation"  for  cer- 
tain neurotic  natures.  Has  that  been  properly 
understood?      There    are   people    who    suflPer 

29 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

frightfully — and  they  are  often  rare  natures, 
too,  though  they  are  sometimes  very  vicious — 
from  their  loathing  of  the  excremental  side  of 
life.  Swift  was  one  of  these.  The  "disgust- 
ing" in  his  writing  is  a  pathological  form,  not 
at  all  unusual,  of  such  a  loathing.  But  Rabelais 
is  no  Dean  Swift— nor  is  there  the  remotest 
resemblance  between  them — Rabelais  may 
really  save  us  from  our  loathing  by  the  huge 
all-embracing  friendliness  of  his  sense  of 
humor. 

There  are  certain  people,  no  doubt,  who 
would  prefer  the  grave  enthusiasm  of  Whit- 
man in  regard  to  this  matter  to  the  freer 
Rabelaisian  touch.  I  cannot  say  that  my  per- 
sonal experience  agrees  with  this  view. 

I  have  found  both  great  men  invaluable ;  but 
I  think  as  far  as  dealing  with  the  Cloaca 
Maxima  side  of  things  is  concerned.  Rabelais 
has  been  the  braver  in  inspiration.  In  these 
little  matters  one  can  only  say,  ''some  are  born 
Rabelaisian,  and  some  require  to  have  Rabelais 
thrust  upon  them !" 

Surely  it  is  wisdom,  in  us  terrestial  mortals, 
to  make  what  imaginative  use  we  can  of  every 
phase  of  our  earthly  condition  ? 

Imagination  has  a  right  to  play  with  every- 
thing that  exists;  and  humor  has  a  right  to 
laugh  at  everything  that  exists.  Everything 
in  life  is  sacred  and  everything  is  a  huge  jest. 

It  is  the  association  of  this  excremental 


30 


RABELAIS 

aspect  of  life,  with  those  high  sacraments  of 
meat  and  drink  and  sex,  which  some  find  so 
hard  to  endure.  Be  not  afraid  mv  little  ones ! 
The  great  and  humorous  gods  have  arranged 
for  this  also ;  and  have  seen  to  it  that  no  brave, 
generous,  amorous  "sunburnt"  emotion  shall 
ever  be  hurt  by  such  associations !  If  a  person 
is  hurt  by  them,  that  is  only  an  indication  that 
they  are  in  grievous  need  of  the  wholesome 
purgative  medicine  of  the  great  doctor !  When 
one  comes  to  speak  of  the  actual  contents  of 
these  books  criticism  itself  must  borrow 
Gargantua's  mouth. 

What  characters!  The  three  great  royal 
giants,  Graugousier,  Gargantua  and  Panta-' 
gruel — have  there  ever  been  such  kings  ?  And 
the  noble  servants  of  such  noble  masters !  The 
whole  atmosphere  is  so  large,  so  genial,  so 
courteous,  so  sweet-tempered,  so  entirely  what 
the  life  of  man  upon  earth  should  be. 

Even  the  military  exploits  of  Friar  John, 
even  the  knavish  tricks  of  Panurge,  cannot 
spoil  our  tenderness  for  these  dear  bully-boys, 
these  mellow  and  magnanimous  rogues !  Cer- 
tain paragraphs  in  Rabelais  recur  to  one's  mind 
daily.  That  laudation  of  Socrates  at  the  begin- 
ning, and  the  description  of  the  "little  boxes 
called  Sileni"  that  outside  have  so  grotesque  an 
adornment,  but  within  are  full  of  ambergris 
and  myrrh  and  all  manner  of  precious  odours. 

And  the  picture  of  the  banquet  "when  they 

31 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

fell  to  the  chat  of  the  afternoon's  collation  and 
began  great  goblets  to  ring,  great  bowls  to 
ting,  great  gammons  to  trot;  pour  me  out  the 
fair  Greek  wine,  the  extravagant  wine,  the 
good  wine,  Lacrima  Christi,  supernaculum!'* 
And,  above  all,  the  most  holy  Abbey  of 
Thelema,  over  the  gate  of  which  was  written 
the  words  that  are  never  far  from  the  hearts 
of  wise  Utopian  Christians,  the  profound 
words,  the  philosophical  words,  the  most 
shrewd  Cabbalistic  words,  and  the  words  that 
"lovers"  alone  can  understand — "Fay  que  ce 
Vouldray!"    Do  as  Thou  Wih! 

Little  they  know  of  Rabelais  who  call  him 
a  lewd  bufifoon — the  profanest  of  mountebanks. 
He  was  one  of  those  rare  spirits  that  redeem 
humanity.  To  open  his  book — though  the 
steam  of  the  grossness  of  it  rises  to  Heaven — 
is  to  touch  the  divine  fingers — the  fingers  that 
heal  the  world. 

How  that  "style"  of  his,  that  great  oceanic 
avalanche  of  learning  and  piety  and  obscenity 
and  gigantic  merriment,  smells  of  the  honest 
earth ! 

How,  with  all  his  huge  scholarship,  he  loves 
to  depend  for  his  richest,  most  human  efifects, 
upon  his  own  peasant-people  of  Touraine. 
The  proverbs  of  the  country-side,  the  wisdom 
of  tavern-wit,  the  shrewdness  and  fantasy  of 
old  wives  tales,  the  sly  earthly  humors  of 
farmers  and  vine-tenders  and  goat-herds  and 

32 


RABELAIS 

goose-girls.  These  are  things  out  of  which  he 
distils  his  vision,  his  oracles,  his  courage. 

There  is  also — who  could  help  observing  it? 
— a  certain  large  and  patriarchal  homeliness — 
a  kind  of  royal  domesticity — about  much  that 
he  writes.  Those  touches,  as  when  Gargantua, 
his  little  dog  in  advance,  enters  the  dining  hall, 
when  they  are  discussing  Panurge's  marriage, 
and  they  all  rise  to  do  him  honor;  as  when 
Gargantua  bids  Pantagruel  farewell  and  gives 
him  a  benediction  so  wise  and  tender;  remain 
in  the  mind  like  certain  passages  in  the  Bible. 
These  are  the  things  that  aesthetic  fools  "with 
varnished  faces"  easily  overlook  and  misunder- 
stand; but  good  simple  fellows — "honest  cods" 
as  Rabelais  would  say — are  struck  to  the  heart 
by  them.  How  proud  the  man  might  be,  who 
in  the  turmoil  of  this  troublesome  w^orld  and 
beneath  the  mystery  of  'ie  grand  Penetre" 
could  answer  to  the  ultimate  question,  "I  am 
a  Christian  of  the  faith  of  Rabelais!" 

Such  a  one,  under  the  spell  of  such  a  master, 
might  indeed  be  able  to  comfort  the  sick  and 
sorry,  and  to  w^hisper  in  their  ears  that  cosmic 
secret — "Bon  Espoir  y  gist  au  fond!"  "Good 
Hope  lies  at  the  Bottom!"  "Good  Hope"  for 
all;  for  the  best  and  the  worst — for  the  whole 
miserable  welter  of  this  chaotic  farce! 

Therefore,  "with  angels  and  archangels"  let 
us  bow  our  heads  and  hold  our  tongues.  Those 
who  fancy  Rabelais  to  be  lacking  in  the  kind 

3  33 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

of  religious  feeling  that  great  souls  respect,  let 
them  read  that  passage  in  the  voyage  of  Panta- 
gruel  that  speaks  of  the  Death  of  Pan.  Vari- 
ous accounts  are  given;  various  explanations 
made ;  of  the  great  cry,  that  the  sailors,  "com- 
ing from  Paloda,"  heard  over  land  and  sea. 
At  the  last  Pantagruel  himself  speaks;  and 
he  tells  them  that  to  him  it  refers  to  nothing 
less  than  the  death  of  Him  whom  the  Scribes 
and  Pharisees  and  Priests  of  Jerusalem  slew. 
"And  well  is  He  called  Pan,  which  in  the  Greek 
means  "All" ;  for  in  Him  is  all  we  are  or  have 
or  hope."  And  having  said  this  he  fell  into 
silence,  and  "tears  large  as  ostrich-eggs  rolled 
down  his  cheeks." 

To  all  who  read  Rabelais  and  love  him,  one 
can  offer  no  better  wish  than  that  the  mystic 
wine  of  his  Holy  Bottle  may  fulfil  their  heart's 
desire.  Happy,  indeed,  those  who  are  not  "un- 
willingly drawn"  by  the  "Fate"  we  all  must 
follow!  "Go  now,  my  friends,"  says  the 
strange  Priestess,  "and  may  that  Circle  whose 
Centre  is  everywhere  and  its  Circumference 
nowhere,  keep  you  in  His  Almighty  protec- 
tion !" 


34 


DANTE 


DANTE 

HE  history  of  Dante's  personal  and 
literary    appeal    would    be    an    ex- 
tremely interesting  one.     No  great 
writer  has  managed  to  excite  more 
opposite  emotions. 

One  thing  may  be  especially  noted  as  signifi- 
cant :  Women  have  always  been  more  attracted 
10  him  than  men.  He  is  in  a  peculiar  sense  the 
Woman's  great  poet.  There  is  a  type  of 
masculine  genius  which  has  always  opposed 
him.  Goethe  cared  little  for  him;  Voltaire 
laughed  at  him;  Nietzsche  called  him  "an 
hy?ena  poetizing  among  the  tombs." 

The  truth  is,  women  love  Dante  for  the  pre- 
cise reason  that  these  men  hate  him.  He  makes 
sex  the  centre  of  everything.  One  need  not 
be  deceived  by  the  fact  that  Dante  worships 
"purity,"  while  Voltaire,  Goethe  and  Nietzsche 
are  little  concerned  with  it.  This  very  lauda- 
tion of  continence  is  itself  an  emphasis  upon 
sex.  These  others  would  play  with  amorous 
propensities;  trifle  with  them  in  their  life,  in 
their  art,  in  their  philosophy;  and  then,  that 
dangerous  plaything  laid  aside  would,  as 
Machiavel  puts  it.  "assume  suitable  attire,  and 

.37 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

return  to  the  company  of  their  equals — the 
great  sages  of  antiquity." 

Now  it  is  quite  clear  that  this  pagan  attitude 
towards  sex,  this  tendency  to  enjoy  it  in  its 
place  and  leave  it  there,  is  one  that,  more  than 
anything  else,  is  irritating  to  women.  If,  as  a 
German  thinker  says,  every  woman  is  a 
courtezan  or  a  mother,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
artists  and  thinkers  who  refuse  alike  the  be- 
guilements  of  the  one  and  the  ironic  tenderness 
of  the  other,  are  not  people  to  be  "loved." 
Dante  refuses  neither;  and  he  has,  further, 
that  peculiar  mixture  of  harsh  strength  and 
touching  weakness,  which  is  so  especially 
appealing  to  women.  They  are  reluctantly 
overcome — not  without  pleasure —  by  his  fierce 
authority;  and  they  can  play  the  "little  mother" 
to  his  weakness.  The  maternal  instinct  is  as 
ironical  as  it  is  tender.  It  smiles  at  the  high 
ideals  or  the  eccentric  child  it  pets,  but  it  would 
not  have  him  different.  What  a  woman  does 
not  like,  whether  she  is  mother  or  courtezan, 
is  that  other  kind  of  irony,  the  irony  of  the 
philosopher,  which  undermines  both  her  ma- 
ternal feeling  and  her  passionate  caresses. 

Women,  too,  even  quite  good  women,  have 
the  stress  of  the  sexual  difiference  constantly 
before  them.  Indeed  it  may  be  said  that  the 
class  of  women  who  are  least  sex-conscious  are 
those  who  have  habitually  to  sell  themselves. 
It  all  matters  so  little  then! 


38 


DANTE 

How  fiercely  is  the  interest  of  the  most 
virtuous  aroused,  when  any  question  of  a  love 
affair  is  rumored.  In  this  sense  every  woman 
is  a  born  "go-between."  Sex  is  not  with  them 
a  thing  apart,  an  exciting  volcanic  thing,  liable 
to  mad  outbursts,  to  weird  perversions,  but  of- 
ten completely  forgotten.  It  is  never  complete- 
ly forgotten.  It  is  diffused.  It  is  everywhere. 
It  lurks  in  a  thousand  innocent  gestures  and 
intimations.  The  savage  purity  of  an  Artemis 
is  no  real  exception.  Sex  is  a  thing  too  press- 
ing to  be  dallied  with.    It  is  all  or  nothing. 

One  cannot  play  with  fire.  When  we  make 
observations  of  this  kind  we  do  not  derogate 
from  the  charm  or  dignity  of  women.  It  is  no 
aspersion  upon  them.  They  did  not  ask  to 
have  it  so.    It  is  so. 

Domestic  life  as  the  European  nations  have 
evolved  it  is  a  queer  compromise.  Its  re- 
straints weigh  heavily,  in  alternate  discord, 
upon  both  sexes. 

Masculine  depravity  rebels  against  it,  and 
the  whole  modern  feministic  movement  shakes 
it  to  the  base.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
Nature  will  admit  of  any  satisfactory  readjust- 
ment. 

Certainly,  as  far  as  overt  acts  are  concerned, 
women  are  far  "purer"  than  men.  It  is  only 
when  we  leave  the  sphere  of  outward  acts  and 
enter  the  sphere  of  cerebral  undercurrents,  that 
all  this  is  changed.     There  the  Biblical  story 

39 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

finds  its  proof,  and  the  daughters  of  Eve  revert 
to  their  mother.  This  is  the  secret  of  that 
mania  for  the  personal  which  characterizes 
women's  conversation.  She  can  say  fine  things 
and  do  fine  work;  but  both  in  her  wit  and  her 
art,  one  is  conscious  of  a  mind  that  has 
voluptuously  welcomed,  or  vindictively  re- 
pulsed, the  approach  of  a  particular  invasion; 
never  of  a  mind  that,  in  its  abstract  love  for 
the  beautiful,  cannot  even  remember  how  it 
came  to  give  birth  to  such  thoughts! 

It  is  the  close  psychological  association  be- 
tween the  emotion  of  religion  and  the  emotion 
of  sex  which  has  always  made  women  more 
religious  than  men. 

This  is  perhaps  only  to  say  that  women  are 
nearer  the  secret  of  the  universe  than  men.  It 
may  well  be  so.  Man's  rationalizing  tendency 
to  divorce  his  intelligence  from  his  intuition — 
may  not  be  the  precise  key  which  opens  those 
magic  doors!  Saucfify  itself — that  most  ex- 
quisite flower  of  the  art  of  character — is  a  pro- 
foundly feminine  thing.  The  most  saintly 
saints,  that  is  to  say  those  who  wear  the  inde- 
scribable distinction  of  their  Master,  are  al- 
ways possessed  of  a  certain  feminine  quality. 

Sanctity  is  woman's  ideal — morality  is 
man's.  The  one  is  based  upon  passion,  and 
by  means  of  love  lifts  us  above  law.  The  other 
is  based  upon  vice  and  the  recoil  from  vice; 
and  has  no  horizons  of  anv  sort. 


40 


DANTE 

That  is  why  the  countries  where  the 
imagination  is  profoundly  feminine  hke 
Russia  and  France  have  sanctity  as  their  ideal. 
Whereas  England  has  its  Puritan  morality, 
and  Germany  its  scientific  efficiency.  These 
latter  races  ought  to  sit  at  Dante's  feet,  to  learn 
the  secret  of  the  ''Beatific  Vision"  that  is  as 
far  beyond  morality  as  it  is  outside  science. 
There  are,  it  is  true,  certain  moments  when  the 
Italian  poet  leads  us  up  into  the  cold  rarified 
air  of  that  "Intellectual  Love  of  God"  which 
leaves  sex,  as  it  leaves  other  human  feelings, 
infinitely  behind.  But  this  Spinozistic  mood  is 
not  the  natural  climate  of  his  soul.  He  is  al- 
ways ready  to  revert,  always  anxious  to  "drag 
Beatrice  in."  Wagner's  "Parsifal"  is  perhaps 
the  most  flagrant  example  of  this  ambiguous 
association  between  religion  and  sex.  The 
sentimental  blasphemy  of  that  feet-washing 
scene  is  an  evidence  of  the  depths  of  sexual 
morbidity  into  which  this  voluptuous  religion 
of  pity  can  lead  us.  O  that  figure  in  the  white 
nightgown,  blessing  his  reformed  harlot! 

It  is  a  pity  Wagner  ever  touched  the  Celtic 
Legend — German  sentimentality  and  Celtic 
romance  need  a  Heine  to  deal  with  them ! 

It  is  indeed  a  difficult  task  to  write  of  the 
relations  between  romantic  love  and  devotional 
religion  and  to  do  it  in  the  grand  style.  That 
is  where  Dante  is  so  supremely  great.  And 
that  is  why,  for  all  his  greatness,  his  influence 

41 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

upon  modern  art  has  been  so  morbid  and  evil. 
The  odious  sensuahty  of  the  so-called  "Pre- 
Raphaelite  School" — a  sensuality  drenched 
with  holy  water  and  perfumed  with  incense — 
has  a  smell  of  corruption  about  it  that  ought 
never  to  be  associated  with  Dante's  name. 

The  worst  of  modern  poets,  the  most  affected 
and  the  most  meticulous,  are  all  anxious  to 
seal  themselves  of  the  tribe  of  Dante.  But 
they  are  no  more  like  that  divine  poet  than  the 
flies  that  feed  on  a  dead  Caesar  are  like  the 
hero  they  cause  to  stink ! 

Our  brave  Oscar  understood  him.  Some  of 
the  most  exquisite  passages  in  "Intentions" 
refer  to  his  poetry.  Was  the  "Divine  Comedy" 
too  clear-cut  and  trenchant  for  Walter  Pater? 
It  is  strange  how  Dante  has  been  left  to 
second-rate  interpreters !  His  illustrators,  too ! 
O  these  sentimentalists,  with  their  Beatrices 
crossing  the  Ponte  Vecchio,  and  their  sad 
youths  looking  on!  All  this  is  an  insult — a 
sacrilege — to  the  proudest,  most  aristocratic 
spirit  who  ever  dwelt  on  earth !  Why  did  not 
Aubrey  Beardsley  stop  that  beautiful  boy  on 
the  threshold?  He  who  was  the  model  of  his 
"Ave  atque  vale!"  might  have  well  served  for 
Casella,  singing  among  the  cold  reeds,  in  the 
white  dawn. 

For  there  are  scenes  in  Dante  which  have 
the  strange,  remote,  perverted,  archaic  loveli- 
ness of  certain  figures  on  the  walls  of  Egyptian 

42 


DANTE 

temples  or  on  the  earliest  Greek  vases.  Here 
the  real  artist  in  him  forgets  God  and  Beatrice 
and  the  whole  hierarchy  of  the  saints.  And  it 
is  because  of  things  of  this  kind  that  many 
curious  people  are  found  to  be  his  worshipers 
who  will  never  themselves  pass  forth  "to  re- 
behold  the  stars."  They  are  unwise  who  find 
Dante  so  bitter  and  theological,  so  Platonic  and 
devoted,  that  they  cannot  open  his  books. 
They  little  know  what  ambiguous  planets,  what 
dark  heathen  meteors  move  on  the  fringe  of  his 
great  star-lit  road.  His  Earthly  Lady,  as  well 
as  his  Heavenly  Lady,  may  have  the  moon 
beneath  her  feet. 

But  neither  of  them  know,  as  does  their 
worshiper  and  lover,  zvhat  lies  on  the  other 
side  of  the  moon. 

What  Dante  leaves  to  us  as  his  ultimate  gift 
is  his  pride  and  his  humility.  The  one  answers 
the  other.  And  both  put  us  to  shame.  He, 
alone  of  great  artists,  holds  in  his  hand  the 
true  sword  of  the  Spirit  for  the  dividing 
asunder  of  men  and  things.  There  is  no  neces- 
sity to  lay  all  the  stress  upon  the  division  be- 
tween the  Lower  and  the  Higher  Love,  be- 
tween Hell  and  Heaven.  There  are  other  dis- 
tinctions in  life  than  these.  And  between  all 
distinctions,  between  all  those  differences 
which  separate  the  "fine"  from  the  "base,"  the 
noble  from  the  ignoble,  the  beautiful  from  the 
hideous,  the  generous  from  the  mean;  Dante 

43 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

draws  the  pitiless  sword-stroke  of  that  "eternal 
separation"  which  is  the  most  tragic  thing  in 
the  world.  In  the  truest  sense  tragic!  For 
so  many  things,  and  so  many  people,  that  must 
be  thus  "cut  off,"  are  among  those  who  harrow 
our  hearts  with  the  deadliest  attraction  and 
are  so  wistful  in  their  weakness.  Through 
the  mists  and  mephitic  smoke  of  our  confused 
age — our  age  that  cries  out  to  be  beyond  the 
good,  when  it  is  beneath  the  beautiful — 
through  the  thick  air  of  indolence  masquerad- 
ing as  toleration  and  indifference  posing  as 
sympathy,  flashes  the  scorching  sword  of  the 
Florentine's  Disdain,  dividing  the  just  from 
the  unjust,  the  true  from  the  false,  and  the 
heroic  from  the  commonplace.  What  matter 
if  his  "division"  is  not  our  "division,"  his 
"formula"  our  "formula"?  It  is  good  for  us 
to  be  confronted  with  such  Disdain.  It  brings 
us  back  once  more  to  "Values";  and  whether 
our  "Values"  are  values  of  taste  or  values  of 
devotion  what  matter?  Life  becomes  once 
more  arresting.  The  everlasting  Drama  re- 
covers its  "Tone" ;  and  the  high  Liturgy  of  the 
last  Illusion  rolls  forward  to  its  own  Music! 
That  Angel  of  God,  who  when  their  hearts 
were  shaken  with  fear  before  the  flame-lit 
walls  of  Dis,  came,  so  straight  across  the 
waters,  and  quelled  the  insolence  of  Hell ;  with 
what  Disdain  he  turns  away  his  face,  even 
from  those  he  has  come  to  save! 


44 


DANTE 

These  "messeng-ers"  of  God,  who  have  so 
superb  a  contempt  for  all  created  things,  does 
one  not  meet  them,  sometimes,  even  in  this  life, 
as  they  pass  us  by  upon  their  secret  errands? 

The  beginning  of  the  Inferno  contains  the 
cruellest  judgment  upon  our  generation  ever 
uttered.  It  is  so  exactly  adapted  to  the  spirit 
of  this  age  that,  hearing  it,  one  staggers  as 
if  from  a  stab.  Are  we  not  this  very  tribe  of 
caitiffs  who  have  committed  the  "Great  Re- 
fusal ?"  Are  we  not  these  very  wretches  whose 
blind  life  is  so  base  that  they  envy  every  other 
Fate?  Are  we  not  those  who  are  neither  for 
God  or  for  his  Enemies  but  are  "for  them- 
selves"; those  who  may  not  even  take  refuge 
in  Hell,  lest  the  one  damned  get  glory  of  them ! 
The  very  terror  of  this  clear-cutting  sword- 
sweep,  dividing  us,  bone  from  bone,  may,  nay ! 
probably  will,  send  us  back  to  our  gentle 
"lovers  of  humanity"  who,  "knowing  every- 
thing pardon  everything."  But  one  sometimes 
wonders  whether  a  life  all  "irony,"  all  "pity," 
all  urbane  "interest,"  would  not  lose  the  savor 
of  its  taste!  There  is  a  danger,  not  only  to 
our  moral  sense,  but  to  our  immoral  sense,  in 
that  genial  air  of  universal  acceptance  which 
has  become  the  fashion. 

What  if,  after  all — even  though  this  uni- 
verse be  so  poor  a  farce — the  mad  lovers  and 
haters,  the  terrible  prophets  and  artists,  zvere 
right  f 

45 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Suppose  the  farce  had  a  cHmax,  a  catastro- 
phe! One  loves  to  repeat  "all  is  possible;"  but 
that  particular  possibility  has  little  attraction. 
It  would  be  indeed  an  anti-climax  if  the  queer 
Comedy  we  have  so  daintily  been  patronizing 
turned  out  to  be  a  Divine  Comedy — and  our- 
selves the  point  of  the  jest!  Not  that  this  is 
very  likely  to  occur.  It  is  more  in  accordance 
with  what  we  know  of  the  terrestial  stage  that 
in  this  wager  of  faith  with  un-faith  neither 
will  ever  discover  who  really  won! 

But  Dante's  "Disdain"  is  not  confined  to  the 
winners  in  the  cosmic  dicing  match.  There  are 
heroic  hearts  in  hell  who,  for  all  their  despair, 
still  yield  not,  nor  abate  a  jot  of  their  courage. 
Such  a  one  was  that  great  Ghibelline  Chief 
who  was  lost  for  "denying  immortality." 
"If  my  people  fled  from  thy  people — that  more 
torments  me  than  this  flame."  In  one  respect 
Dante  is,  beyond  doubt,  the  greatest  poet  of 
the  world.  I  mean  in  his  power  of  heighten- 
ing the  glory  and  the  terribleness  of  the  human 
race.  Across  the  three-fold  kingdom  of  his- 
"Terza  Rima"  passes,  in  tragic  array,  the 
whole  procession  of  human  history — and  each 
figure  there,  each  solitary  person,  whether  of 
the  Blessed  or  the  Purged,  or  the  Condemned, 
wears,  like  a  garment  of  fire,  the  dreadful 
dignity  of  having  been  a  man!  The  moving 
sword-point  that  flashes,  first  upon  one  and 
then  upon  another,  amid  our  dim  transactions, 

46 


DANTE 

is  nothing  but  the  angry  arm  of  human 
imagination,  moulding  Hfe  to  grander  issues; 
creating,  if  not  discovering,  subhmer  laws. 

In  conveying  that  thrilling  sense  of  the 
momentousness  of  human  destiny  which  be- 
yond anything  else  certain  historic  names 
evoke,  none  can  surpass  him.  The  brief, 
branding  lines,  with  which  the  enemies  of  God 
are  engraved  upon  their  monuments  "more 
lasting  than  brass,"  seem  to  add  a  glory  to 
damnation.  Who  can  forget  how  that  "Simon- 
ist"  and  "Son  of  Sodom"  lifts  his  hands  up 
out  of  the  deepest  Pit,  and  makes  "the  fig"  at 
God?  "Take  it,  God,  for  at  Thee  I  aim  it!" 
There  is  a  sting  of  furious  blasphemy  in  this 
personal  outrage  that  goes  beyond  all  limits. 

Yet  who  is  there,  but  does  not  feel  glad  that 
the  "Pistoian"  uttered  what  he  uttered — out 
of  his  Hell — to  his  Maker? 

Is  not  Newman  right  when  he  says  that  the 
heart  of  man  does  not  naturally  "love  God?" 

But  perhaps  in  the  whole  poem  nothing  is 
more  beautiful  than  that  great  roll  of  honor 
of  the  unchristened  Dead,  who  make  up  the 
company  of  the  noble  Heathen.  Sad,  but  not 
unhappy,  they  walk  to  and  fro  in  their  Pagan 
Hades,  and  occupy  themselves,  as  of  old,  in 
discoursing  upon  philosophy  and  poetry  and 
the  Mystery  of  Life. 

Those  single  lines,  devoted  to  such  names, 
are  unlike  anything  else  in  literature.     That 

47 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

''Caesar,  in  armour,  with  Ger-Falcon  eyes," 
challenges  one's  obeisance  as  a  great  shout  of 
his  own  legionaries,  while  that  "Alone,  by  him- 
self, the  Soldan"  bows  to  the  dust  our  Chris- 
tian pride,  as  the  Turbaned  Commander  of  the 
Faithful,  with  his  ghostly  crescent  blade, 
strides  past,  dreaming  of  the  Desert. 

It  is  in  touches  like  these,  surely,  rather  than 
in  the  Beatrice  scenes  or  the  devil  scenes,  that 
the  poet  is  most  himself. 

It  needs,  perhaps,  a  certain  smouldering  dra- 
matic passion,  in  regard  to  the  whole  spectacle 
of  human  life,  to  do  justice  to  such  lines.  It 
needs  also  that  mixture  of  disdain  and  humil- 
ity which  is  his  own  paramount  attribute. 

And  the  same  smouldering  furnace  of  "rev- 
erence" characterizes  Dante's  use  of  the  older 
literatures.  No  writer  who  has  ever  lived  has 
such  a  dramatic  sense  of  the  "great  effects"  in 
style,  and  the  ritual  of  words. 

That  passage,  ''Thou  art  my  master  and  my 
author.  It  is  from  thee  I  learnt  the  beautiful 
style  that  has  done  me  so  much  honour,"  with 
its  reiteration  of  the  rhythmic  syllables  of 
"honour,"  opens  up  a  salutary  field  of  aes- 
thetic contemplation.  His  quotations,  too, 
from  the  Psalms,  and  from  the  Roman  Lit- 
urgy, become,  by  their  imaginative  inclusion, 
part  of  his  own  creative  genius.  That  "Vex- 
illa  regis  prodeunt  Inferni!"  Who  can  hear  it 
without  the  same  thrill,  as  when  Napoleonic 

48 


DANTE 

trumpets  heralded  the  Emperor!  In  the  pres- 
ence of  such  moments  the  whole  elaboration 
of  the  Beatrice  Cult  falls  away.  That  roman- 
tic perversion  of  the  sex  instinct  is  but  the 
psychic  motive  force.  Once  started  on  his 
splendid  and  terrible  road,  the  poet  forgets 
everything  except  the  ''Principle  of  Beauty" 
and  the  "Memory  of  Great  Men."  Parallel 
with  these  things  is  Dante's  passion  of  rever- 
ence for  the  old  historic  places — provinces, 
cities,  rivers  and  valleys  of  his  native  Italy. 
Even  when  he  lifts  up  his  voice  to  curse  them, 
as  he  curses  his  own  Firenze,  it  is  but  an  in- 
version of  the  same  mood.  The  cities  where 
men  dwelt  then  took  to  themselves  living  per- 
sonalities; and  Dante,  who  in  love  and  hate 
was  Italian  of  the  Italians,  was  left  indiffer- 
ent by  none  of  these.  How  strange  to  modern 
ears  this  thrill  of  recognition,  when  one  exile, 
even  among  the  dead,  meets  another,  of  their 
common  citizenship  of  "no  mean  city !"  Of 
this  classic  "patriotism"  the  world  requires  a 
Renaissance,  that  we  may  be  saved  from  the 
shallowness  of  artificial  commercial  Empires. 
The  new  "Inter-nationalism"  is  the  sinister 
product  of  a  generation  that  has  grown  "de- 
racinated," that  has  lost  its  roots  in  the  soil. 
It  is  an  Anglo-Germanic  thing  and  opposed  to 
it  the  proud  tenacity  of  the  Latin  race  turns, 
even  today,  to  what  Barres  calls  the  "worship 
of  one's  Dead." 


49 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Anglo-Saxon  Industrialism,  Teutonic  Or- 
ganization, have  their  world  place;  but  it  is  to 
the  Latin,  and,  it  may  be,  to  the  Slav  also,  that 
the  human  spirit  must  turn  in  those  subtler 
hours  when  it  cannot  "live  by  bread  alone." 

The  modern  international  empires  mav 
obliterate  local  boundaries  and  trample  on  local 
altars.  In  spite  of  them,  and  in  defiance  of 
them,  the  soul  of  an  ancient  race  lives  on.  its 
saints  and  its  artists  forging  the  iron  of  its 
Phoenix-ashes ! 

Dante  himself,  dreaming  over  the  high  Vir- 
gilian  Prophecy  of  a  World-State,  under  a 
Spiritual  Caesar,  yearned  to  restore  the  Pax 
Romana  to  a  chaotic  world.  Such  a  vision, 
such  an  Orbis  Terrarum  at  the  feet  of  Christ, 
has  no  element  in  common  with  the  material 
dominance  of  modern  commercial  empires.  It 
much  more  closely  resembles  certain  Utopias 
of  the  modern  Revolutionary.  In  its  spirit  it  is 
not  less  Latin  than  the  traditional  customs  of 
the  City-States  it  would  include.  Its  real  im- 
plication may  be  found  in  the  assimilative  gen- 
ius of  the  Catholic  Church,  consecrating  but 
not  effacing  local  altars ;  transforming,  but  not 
destroying,  local  pieties.  Who  can  deny  that 
this  formidable  vision  answers  the  deepest  need 
of  the  modern  world? 

The  discoverv  of  some  Planetary  Synthesis 
within  the  circle  of  which  all  the  passionate 
race  cults  may  flourish;  growing  not  less  in- 

50 


DANTE 

tense  but  more  intense,  under  the  new  World- 
City — this  is  nothing  else  than  what  the  soul 
of  the  earth,  "dreaming  on  things  to  come," 
may  actually  be  evolving. 

Who  knows  if  the  new  prominence  given  by 
the  war  to  Russian  thought  may  not  incred- 
ibly hasten  such  a  Vita  Nuova?  We  know 
that  the  Pan-Slavic  dream,  even  from  the  days 
of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  has  been  of  this  spiritual 
unity,  and  it  may  be  remembered  that  it  was 
always  from  "beyond  the  Alps"  that  Dante 
looked  for  the  Liberator.  Who  knows?  The 
great  surging  antipodal  tides  of  life  lash  one 
another  into  foam.  Out  of  chaos  stars  are 
born.  And  it  may  be  the  madness  of  a  dream 
even  so  much  as  to  speak  of  "unity"  while  crea- 
tion seethes  and  hisses  in  its  terrible  vortex. 
Mockingly  laugh  the  imps  of  irony,  while  the 
Saints  keep  their  vigil.  Man  is  a  surprising 
animal;  by  no  means  always  bent  on  his  own 
redemption;  sometimes  bent  on  his  own  de- 
struction ! 

And  meanwhile  the  demons  of  life  dance  on. 
Dante  may  build  up  his  great  triple  universe 
in  his  great  triple  rhyme,  and  encase  it  in  walls 
of  brass.  But  still  they  dance  on.  We  may 
tremble  at  the  supreme  poet's  pride  and  wonder 
at  the  passion  of  his  humility — but  "the 
damned  grotesques  make  arabesques,  like  the 
wind  upon  the  sand !" 


51 


SHAKESPEARE 


SHAKESPEARE 

'HERE  is  something-  pathetic  about 
the  bHiid  devotion  of  humanity  to 
its  famous  names.  But  how  in- 
discriminate it  is;  how  lacking  in 
discernment ! 

This  is,  above  all,  true  of  Shakespeare, 
whose  peculiar  and  quite  personal  genius  has 
almost  been  buried  under  the  weight  of  popu- 
lar idolatry.  No  wonder  such  critics  as  Vol- 
taire, Tolstoi,  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  have 
taken  upon  themselves  to  intervene.  The 
Frenchman's  protest  was  an  aesthetic  one. 
The  more  recent  objectors  have  adopted  moral 
and  philosophic  grounds.  But  it  is  the  un- 
reasoning adoration  of  the  mob  which  led  to 
both  attacks. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  estimate  the  elements 
which  have  gone  to  make  up  this  Shakespeare- 
God.  The  voices  of  the  priests  behind  the  Idol 
are  only  too  clearly  distinguishable.  We  hear 
the  academic  voice,  the  showman's  voice,  and 
the  voice  of  the  ethical  preacher.  They  are  all 
absurd,  but  their  different  absurdities  have 
managed  to  flow  together  into  one  powerful 
and  unified  convention.     Our  popular  orators 

55 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

gesticulate  and  clamour;  our  professors  "talk 
Greek;"  our  ethical  Brutuses  "explain;"  and 
the  mob  "throw  up  their  sweaty  night-caps;" 
while  our  poor  Caesar  of  Poetry  sinks  down 
out  of  sight,  helpless  among  them  all. 

Charles  Lamb,  who  understood  him  better 
than  anyone — and  who  loved  Plays — does  not 
hesitate  to  accuse  our  Stage-Actors  of  being 
the  worst  of  all  in  their  misrepresentation.  He 
doubts  whether  even  Garrick  understood  the 
subtlety  of  the  roles  he  played,  and  the  few  ex- 
ceptions he  allows  in  his  own  age  make  us  won- 
der what  he  would  say  of  ours. 

Finally  there  is  the  "Philosophical  Shake- 
speare" of  the  German  appreciation,  and  this 
we  feel  instinctively  to  be  the  least  like  the 
original  of  all ! 

The  irony  of  it  is  that  the  author  of  Hamlet 
and  the  Tempest  does  not  only  live  in  a  dif- 
ferent world  from  that  of  these  motley  ex- 
ponents. He  lives  in  an  antagonistic  one. 
Shakespeare  was  as  profoundly  the  enemy  of 
scholastic  pedantry  as  he  was  the  enemy  of 
puritan  squeamishness.  He  was  almost  un- 
kindly averse  to  the  breath  of  the  profane 
crowd.  And  his  melancholy  scepticism,  with 
its  half-humorous  assent  to  the  traditional 
pieties,  is  at  the  extremest  opposite  pole  from 
the  "truths"  of  metaphysical  reason.  The 
Shakespeare  of  the  Popular  Revivals  is  a  fan- 
tastic caricature.    The  Shakespeare  of  the  Col- 

56 


SHAKESPEARE 

lege  Text-Books  is  a  lean  scarecrow.  But  the 
Shakespeare  of  the  philosophical  moralists  is 
an  Hob-goblin  from  whom  one  flees  in  dismay. 

Enjoying  the  plays  themselves — the  inter- 
preters forgotten — a  normally  intelligent 
reader  cannot  fail  to  respond  to  a  recognisable 
Personality  there,  a  Personality  with  apathies 
and  antipathies,  with  prejudices  and  predilec- 
tions. Very  quickly  he  will  discern  the  absurd 
unreality  of  that  monstrous  Idol,  that  ubiqui- 
tous Hegelian  God.  Very  soon  he  will  recog- 
nize that  in  trying  to  make  their  poet  every- 
thing they  have  made  him  nothing. 

No  one  can  read  Shakespeare  with  direct 
and  simple  enjoyment  without  discovering  in 
his  plays  a  quite  definite  and  personal  attitude 
towards  life.  Shakespeare  is  no  Absolute  Di- 
vinity, reconciling  all  oppositions  and  trans- 
cending all  limitations.  He  is  not  that  "cloud- 
capped  mountain,"  too  lofty  to  be  scanned,  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  Sonnet.  He  is  a  sad  and 
passionate  artist,  using  his  bitter  experiences 
to  intensify  his  insight,  and  playing  with  his 
humours  and  his  dreams  to  soften  the  sting  of 
that  brutish  reality  which  he  was  doomed  to 
unmask.  The  best  way  of  indicating  the  per- 
sonal mood  which  emerges  as  his  final  attitude 
is  to  describe  it  as  that  of  the  perfectly  natu- 
ral man  confronting  the  universe.  Of  course, 
there  is  no  such  ''perfectly  natural  man,"  but 
he  is  a  legitimate  lay-figure,  and  we  all  approx- 

57 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

imate  to  him  at  times.  The  natural  man,  in  his 
unsophisticated  hours,  takes  the  Universe  at 
its  surface  value,  neither  rejecting  the  delicate 
compensations,  nor  mitigating  the  cruelty  of 
the  grotesque  farce.  The  natural  man  accepts 
what  is  given.  He  swallows  the  chaotic  sur- 
prises, the  extravagant  accidents,  the  whole 
fantastic  "pell-mell."'  He  accepts,  too,  the  tra- 
ditional pieties  of  his  race,  their  "hope  against 
hope,"  their  gracious  ceremonial,  their  conse- 
cration of  birth  and  death.  He  accepts  these, 
not  because  he  is  confident  of  their  "truth," 
but  because  they  are  there;  because  they  have 
been  there  so  long,  and  have  interwoven  them- 
selves with  the  chances  and  changes  of  the 
whole  dramatic  spectacle. 

He  accepts  them  spontaneously,  humorous- 
ly, affectionately;  not  anxious  to  improve  them 
— what  would  be  the  object  of  that  ? — and  cer- 
tainly not  seeking  to  controvert  them.  He  rev- 
erences this  Religion  of  his  Race  not  only  be- 
cause it  has  its  own  sad,  pathetic  beauty,  but 
because  it  has  got  itself  involved  in  the  com- 
mon burden;  lightening  such  a  burden  here, 
making  it,  perhaps,  a  little  heavier  there,  but 
lending  it  a  richer  tone,  a  subtler  colour,  a 
more  significant  shape.  It  does  not  trouble  the 
natural  man  that  Religion  should  deal  with 
"the  Impossible."  Where,  in  such  a  world  as 
this,  does  that  begin  ?  He  has  no  agitating  de- 
sire to  reconcile  it  with  reason. 


58 


SHAKESPEARE 

At  the  bottom  of  his  soul  he  has  a  shrewd 
suspicion  that  it  rather  grew  out  of  the  earth 
than  fell  from  the  sky,  but  that  does  not  con- 
cern him.  It  may  be  based  upon  no  eternal 
verity.  It  may  lead  to  no  certain  issue.  It  may 
be  neither  very  "useful"  or  very  "moral." 
But  it  is,  at  any  rate,  a  beautiful  work  of  imag- 
inative art,  and  it  lends  life  a  certain  dignity 
that  nothing  can  quite  replace.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  natural  man's  attitude  to  these  things 
does  not  differ  much  from  the  attitude  of  the 
great  artists.  It  is  only  that  a  certain  lust  for 
creation,  and  a  certain  demonic  curiosity, 
scourge  these  latter  on  to  something  beyond 
passive  resignation. 

A  De  Vinci  or  a  Goethe  accepts  religion  and 
uses  it,  but  between  it  and  the  depths  of  his 
own  mind  remains  forever  an  inviolable  film 
of  sceptical  "white  light."  This  "qualified  as- 
sent" is  precisely  what  excites  the  fury  of  such 
individualistic  thinkers  as  Tolstoi  and  Bernard 
Shavv\  It  were  amusing  to  note  the  difference 
between  the  "humour"  of  this  latter  and  the 
"humour"  of  Shakespeare.  Shaw's  humour 
consists  in  emphasizing  the  absurdity  of  hu- 
man Custom,  compared  with  the  good  sense 
of  the  philosopher.  Shakespeare's  humour 
consists  in  emphasizing  the  absurdity  of  phil- 
osophers, compared  with  the  good  sense  of 
Custom.  The  one  is  the  humour  of  the  Puri- 
tan, directed  against  the  ordinary  man,  on  be- 

59 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

half  of  the  Universe.  The  other  is  the  humour 
of  the  Artist,  directed  against  the  Universe, 
on  behalf  of  the  ordinary  man. 

Shakespeare  is,  at  bottom,  the  most  extreme 
of  Pessimists.  He  has  no  faith  in  "progress," 
no  belief  in  ''eternal  values,"  no  transcendental 
"intuitions,"  no  zeal  for  reform.  The  universe 
to  him,  for  all  its  loveliness,  remains  an  out- 
rageous jest.  The  cosmic  is  the  comic.  Any- 
thing may  be  expected  of  this  "pendant 
world,"  except  what  we  expect;  and  when  it 
is  a  question  of  "falling  back,"  we  can  only  fall 
back  on  human-made  custom.  We  live  by  Illu- 
sions, and  when  the  last  Illusion  fails  us,  we 
die.  After  reading  Shakespeare,  the  final  im- 
pression left  upon  the  mind  is  that  the  world 
can  only  be  justified  as  an  aesthetic  spectacle. 
To  appreciate  a  Show  at  once  so  sublime  and 
so  ridiculous,  one  needs  to  be  very  brave,  very 
tender,  and  very  humorous.  Nothing  else  is 
needed.  "Man  must  abide  his  going  hence, 
even  as  his  coming  hither.  Ripeness  is  all." 
When  Courage  fails  us,  it  is — "as  flies  to  wan- 
ton boys  are  we  to  the  gods.  They  kill  us  for 
their  sport."  When  tenderness  fails  us,  it  is — • 
"Tomorrow  and  tomorrow  and  tomorrow, 
creeps  in  this  petty  pace  from  day  to  day  to  the 
last  syllable  of  recorded  time."  When  humour 
fails  us,  it  is — "How  weary,  stale,  flat  and  un- 
profitable, seem  to  me  all  the  uses  of  this 
world !" 


60 


SHAKESPEARE 

So  much  for  Life!  And  when  we  come  to 
Death,  how  true  it  is,  as  Charles  Lamb  says, 
that  none  has  spoken  of  Death  hke  Shake- 
speare! And  he  has  spoken  of  it  so — with 
such  an  absolute  grasp  of  our  mortal  feeling 
about  it — because  his  mood  in  regard  to  it  is 
the  mood  of  the  natural  man;  of  the  natural 
man,  unsophisticated  by  false  hopes,  unelated 
by  vain  assurance.  His  attitude  towards  death 
neither  sweetens  "the  unpalatable  draught  of 
mortality"  nor  permits  us  to  let  go  the  balm 
of  its  "eternal  peace."  How  frightful  "to  lie 
in  cold  obstruction  and  to  rot;  this  sensible 
warm  motion  to  become  a  kneaded  clod!"  and 
yet,  "after  life's  fitful  fever,"  how  blessed  to 
"sleep  well !" 

What  we  note  about  this  mood — the  mood 
of  Shakespeare  and  the  natural  man — is  that 
it  never  for  a  moment  dallies  with  philosophic 
fancies  or  mystic  visions.  It  "thinks  highly  of 
the  soul,"  but  in  the  natural,  not  the  metaphys- 
ical, sense.  It  is  the  attitude  of  Rabelais  and 
Montaigne,  not  the  attitude  of  Wordsworth 
or  Browning.  It  is  the  tone  we  know  so  well 
in  the  Homeric  poems.  It  is  the  tone  of  the 
Psalms  of  David.  We  hear  its  voice  in  "Ec- 
clesiastes,"  and  the  wisdom  of  "Solomon  the 
Kinj^"  is  full  of  it.  In  more  recent  times,  it  is 
the  feeling  of  those  who  veer  between  our 
race's  traditional  hope  and  the  dark  gulf  of 
eternal  silence.     It  is  the  "Aut  Christus  aut 


61 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Nihil"  of  those  who  ''by  means  of  metaphysic" 
have  dug  a  pit,  into  which  metaphysic  has  dis- 
appeared ! 

The  gaiety  and  childlike  animal  spirits  of 
Shakespeare's  Comedies  need  not  deceive  us. 
Why  should  we  not  forget  the  whips  and 
scorns  for  a  while,  and  fleet  the  time  careless- 
ly, ''as  they  did  in  the  golden  age?"  Such 
simple  fooling  goes  better  with  the  irresponsi- 
bility of  our  fate  than  the  more  pungent  wit 
of  the  moral  comedians.  The  tragic  laughter 
which  the  confused  issues  of  life  excite  in  sub- 
tler souls  is  not  lacking,  but  the  sweet  obliqui- 
ties of  honest  clowns  carry  us  just  as  far. 
Shakespeare  loves  fools  as  few  have  loved 
them,  and  it  is  often  his  humour  to  put  into 
their  mouth  the  ultimate  wisdom. 

It  is  remarkable  that  these  plays  should  com- 
mence with  a  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream" 
and  end  with  a  "Tempest."  In  the  interval  the 
great  sombre  passions  of  our  race  are  sounded 
and  dismissed;  but  as  he  began  with  Titania, 
so  he  ends  with  Ariel.  From  the  fairy  forest 
to  the  enchanted  island;  from  a  dream  to  a 
dream.  With  Shakespeare  there  is  no  Wag- 
nerian, Euripidean  "apologia."  There  is  no 
"Parsifal"  or  "Bacchanals."  From  the  mean- 
ingless tumult  of  mortal  passions  he  returns, 
with  a  certain  ironic  weariness,  to  the  magic 
of  Nature  and  the  wonder  of  youth.  Pros- 
pero,  dismissing  his  spirits  "into  thin  air,"  has 

62 


SHAKESPEARE 

the  last  word;  and  the  last  word  is  as  the  first: 
"we  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on, 
and  our  little  life  is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 
The  easy-going  persons  who  reluct  at  the  idea 
of  a  pessimistic  Shakespeare  should  turn  the 
pages  of  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Measure  for 
Measure,  and  Timon  of  Athens.  What  we 
guessed  as  we  read  Hamlet  and  Lear  grows  a 
certainty  as  we  read  these  plays. 

Here  the  "gentle  Shakespeare"  does  the 
three  things  that  are  most  unpardonable.  He 
unmasks  virtue;  he  betrays  Woman;  and  he 
curses  the  gods.  The  most  intransigeant  of 
modern  revolutionaries  might  learn  a  trick  or 
two  from  this  sacred  poet.  In  Lear  he  puts 
the  very  voice  of  Anarchy  into  the  mouth  of 
the  King— "Die  for  adultery?  No!"  "Handy- 
dandy,  which  is  the  Magistrate  and  which  is 
the  Thief?"    "A  dog's  obeyed  in  office." 

Have  I  succeeded  in  making  clear  what  I 
feel  about  the  Shakespearean  attitude?  At 
bottom,  it  is  absolutely  sceptical.  Deep  yawns 
below  Deep;  and  if  we  cannot  read  "the  writ- 
ing upon  the  wall,"  the  reason  may  be  that 
there  is  no  writing  there.  Ha^dng  lifted  a 
corner  of  the  Veil  of  Isis,  having  glanced  once 
into  that  Death-Kingdom  where  grope  the 
roots  of  the  Ash-Tree  whose  name  is  Fear,  we 
return  to  the  surface,  from  Nadir  to  Zenith, 
and  become  "superficial" — "out  of  profundity." 

The    infinite    spaces,    as    Pascal    said,    are 

63 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

"frightful."  That  way  madness  hes.  And 
those  who  would  be  sane  upon  earth  must  drug 
themselves  with  the  experience,  or  with  the 
spectacle  of  the  experience,  of  human  passion. 
Within  this  charmed  circle,  and  here  alone, 
they  may  be  permitted  to  forget  the  Outer 
Terror. 

The  noble  spirit  is  not  the  spirit  that  con- 
descends to  pamper  in  itself  those  inflated 
moods  of  false  optimistic  hope,  which,  spring- 
ing from  mere  physiological  well-being,  send 
us  leaping  and  bounding,  with  such  boisterous 
assurance,  along  the  sunny  road.  Such  prag- 
matic self-deception  is  an  impertinence  in  the 
presence  of  a  world  like  this. 

It  is  a  sign  of  what  one  might  call  a  philo- 
sophically ill-bred  nature.  It  is  the  indecent 
"gratitude"  of  the  pig  over  his  trough.  It  is 
the  little  yellow  eye  of  sanctified  bliss  turned 
up  to  the  God  who  "must  be  in  His  Heaven"  if 
zue  are  so  privileged.  This  "never  doubting 
good  will  triumph"  is  really,  when  one  exam- 
ines it,  nothing  but  the  inverted  prostration  of 
the  helot-slave,  glad  to  have  been  allowed  to 
get  so  totally  drunk!  It  blusters  and  swag- 
gers, but  at  heart  it  is  base  and  ignoble.  For 
it  is  not  sensitive  enough  to  feel  that  the  Uni- 
verse cannot  be  pardoned  for  the  cry  of  one 
tortured  creature,  and  that  all  "the  worlds  we 
shall  traverse"  cannot  make  up  for  the  despair 
of  one  human  child. 


64 


SHAKESPEARE 

To  be  "cheerful"  about  the  Universe  in  the 
manner  of  these  people  is  to  insult  the  Christ 
who  died.  It  is  to  outrage  the  "little  ones," 
over  whose  bodies  the  Wheel  has  passed. 
When  Nietzsche,  the  martyr  of  his  own  mur- 
dered pity,  calls  upon  us  to  "love  Fate,"  he 
does  not  shout  so  lustily.  His  laughter  is  the 
laughter  of  one  watching  his  darling  stripped 
for  the  rods.  He  who  would  be  "in  harmony 
with  Nature,"  with  those  "murderous  minis- 
ters," who,  in  their  blind  abyss,  throw  dice 
with  Chance,  must  be  in  harmony  with  the 
giants  of  Jotunheim,  as  well  as  with  the  lords 
of  Valhalla.  He  must  be  able  to  look  on  grim- 
ly while  Asgard  totters ;  he  must  welcome  "the 
Twilight  of  the  Gods."  To  have  a  mind  in- 
ured to  such  conceptions,  a  mind  capable  of  re- 
maining on  such  a  verge,  is,  alone,  to  be,  in- 
tellectually speaking,  what  we  call  "aristo- 
cratic." When,  even  with  eyes  like  poor 
Gloucester's  in  the  play,  we  can  see  "how  this 
world  wags,"  it  is  slavish  and  "plebeian"  to 
swear  that  it  all  "means  intensely,  and  means 
well."    It  is  also  to  lie  in  one's  throat! 

No  wonder  Shakespeare  treats  reverently 
every  "superstition,"  every  anodyne  and  ne- 
penthe offered  to  the  inmates  of  this  House  of 
the  Incurable.  Such  "sprinkling  with  holy 
water,"  such  "rendering  ourselves  stupid,"  is 
the  only  alternative.     Anything  else  is  the  in- 

5  65 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

sight   of   the   hero,   or   the   hypocrisy   of   the 
preacher ! 

Has  it  been  reahzed  how  curiously  the  in- 
terpreters of  Shakespeare  omit  the  principal 
thing  ? 

They  revel  in  his  Grammar,  his  History,  his 
Biology,  his  Botany,  his  Geography,  his  Psy- 
chology and  his  Ethics.  They  never  speak  of 
his  Poetry.  Now  Shakespeare  is,  above  every- 
thing, a  poet.  To  poetry,  over  and  over  again, 
as  our  Puritans  know  well,  he  sacrifices  Truth, 
Morality,  Probability,  nay!  the  very  principles 
of  Art  itself. 

As  Dramas,  many  of  his  plays  are  scanda- 
lously bad;  many  of  his  characters  fantastic. 
One  can  put  one's  finger  in  almost  every  case 
upon  the  persons  and  situations  that  interested 
him  and  upon  those  that  did  not.  And  how 
carelessly  he  ''sketches  in"  the  latter!  So  far 
from  being  "the  Objective  God  of  Art"  they 
seek  to  make  him,  he  is  the  most  wayward  and 
subjective  of  all  wandering  souls. 

No  natural  person  can  read  him  without 
feeling  the  pulse  of  extreme  personal  passion 
behind  everything  he  writes. 

And  this  pulse  of  personal  passion  is  always 
expressing  itself  in  Poetry.  He  will  let  the 
probabilities  of  a  character  vanish  into  air,  or 
dwindle  into  a  wistful  note  of  attenuated  con- 
vention, when  once  such  a  one  has  served  his 
purpose  as  a  reed  to  pipe  his  strange  tunes 

66 


SHAKESPEARE 

through.  He  will  whistle  the  most  important 
personage  down  the  wind,  lost  to  interest  and 
identity,  when  once  he  has  put  into  his  mouth 
his  own  melancholy  brooding  upon  life — his 
own  imaginative  reaction. 

And  so  it  happens  that,  in  spite  of  all  aca- 
demic opinion,  those  who  understand  Shake- 
speare best  tease  themselves  least  over  his  dra- 
matic lapses.  For  let  it  be  whispered  at  once, 
without  further  scruple.  As  far  as  the  art  of 
the  drama  is  concerned,  Shakespeare  is  shame- 
less. The  poetic  instinct — one  might  call  it 
"epical"  or  "lyrical,"  for  it  is  both  these — is 
far  more  dominant  in  our  "greatest  dramatist" 
than  any  dramatic  conscience.  That  is  pre- 
cisely why  those  among  us  who  love  "poetry," 
but  find  "drama,"  especially  "drama  since  Ib- 
sen," intolerably  tiresome,  revert  again  and 
again  to  Shakespeare.  Only  absurd  groups  of 
Culture-Philistines  can  read  these  "powerful 
modern  productions"  more  than  once!  One 
knows  not  whether  their  impertinent  preach- 
ing, or  their  exasperating  technical  cleverness 
is  the  more  annoying. 

They  may  well  congratulate  themselves  on 
being  different  from  Shakespeare.  They  are 
extremely  different.  They  are,  indeed,  nothing 
but  his  old  enemies,  the  Puritans,  "translated," 
like  poor  Bottom,  and  wearing  the  donkey's 
head  of  "art  for  art's  sake"  in  place  of  their 
own  simple  foreheads. 

67 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Art  for  art's  sake!  The  thing  has  become 
a  Decalogue  of  forbidding  commandments,  as 
devastating  as  those  Ten.  It  is  the  new  avatar 
of  the  "moral  sense"  carrying  categorical  in- 
solence into  the  sphere  of  our  one  Alsatian 
sanctuary ! 

I  am  afraid  Shakespeare  was  a  very  "im- 
moral" artist.  I  am  afraid  he  wrote  as  one  of 
the  profane. 

But  what  of  the  Greeks  ?  The  Greeks  never 
let  themselves  go!  No!  And  for  a  sufficient 
reason.  Greek  Drama  was  Religion.  It  was 
Ritual.  And  we  know  how  "responsible"  rit- 
ual must  be.  The  gods  must  have  their  in- 
cense from  the  right  kind  of  censer. 

But  you  cannot  evoke  Religion  "in  vacuo." 
You  cannot,  simply  by  assuming  grave  airs 
about  your  personal  "taste,"  or  even  about  the 
"taste"  of  your  age,  give  it  that  consecration. 

Beauty?  God  knows  what  beauty  is.  But 
I  can  tell  you  what  it  is  not.  It  is  not  the  sec- 
tarian anxiety  of  any  pompous  little  clique  to 
get  "saved"  in  the  artistic  "narrow  path."  It 
is  much  rather  what  Stendhal  called  it.  But 
he  spoke  so  frivolously  that  I  dare  not  quote 
him. 

Has  it  occurred  to  you,  gentle  reader,  to 
note  how  "Protestant"  this  New  Artistic 
Movement  is?  Shakespeare,  in  his  aesthetic 
•method,  as  well  as  in  his  piety,  had  a  Catho- 
lic soul.    In  truth,  the  hour  has  arrived  when 

68 


SHAKESPEARE    - 

a  "Renaissance"  of  the  free  spirit  of  Poetry 
in  Drama  is  required.  Why  must  this  mon- 
strous shadow  of  the  Hyperborean  Ibsen  go 
on  darkening  the  play-instinct  in  us,  Hke  some 
ugly,  domineering  John  Knox?  I  suspect  that 
there  are  many  generous  Rabelaisian  souls 
who  could  lift  our  mortal  burden  with  oceanic 
merriment,  only  the  New  Movement  frightens 
them.  They  are  afraid  they  would  not  be 
''Greek"  enough — or  "Scandinavian"  enough. 
Meanwhile  the  miserable  populace  have  to 
choose  between  Babylonian  Pantomimes  and 
Gaelic  Mythology,  if  they  are  not  driven,  out 
of  a  kind  of  spite,  into  the  region  of  wholesome 
"domestic  sunshine." 

What,  in  our  hearts,  we  natural  men  desire 
is  to  be  delivered  at  one  blow  from  the  fairies 
with  weird  names  (so  different  from  poor  Ti- 
tania!),  and  from  the  three-thousand  "Uni- 
ties!" What  "poetry"  we  do  get  is  so  vague 
and  dim  and  wistful  and  forlorn  that  it  makes 
us  want  to  go  out  and  "buy  clothes"  for  some- 
one. We  veer  between  the  abomination  of 
city-reform  and  the  desolation  of  Ultima 
Thule. 

But  Shakespeare  is  Shakespeare  still.  O 
those  broken  and  gasped-out  human  cries,  full 
of  the  old  poignancy,  full  of  the  old  enchant- 
ment !  Shakespeare's  poetry  is  the  extreme  op- 
posite of  any  "cult."  It  is  the  ineffable  expres- 
sion, in  music  that  makes  the  heart  stop,  of  the 

69 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

feelings  which  have  stirred  every  Jack  and 
Jill  among  us,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world!  It  has  the  effect  of  those  old  "songs" 
of  the  countryside  that  hit  the  heart  in  us  so 
shrewdly  that  one  feels  as  though  the  wind 
had  made  them  or  the  rain  or  the  wayside 
grass;  for  they  know  too  much  of  what  we 
tell  to  none!  It  is  the  "one  touch  of  Nature." 
And  how  they  break  the  rules,  these  surpassing 
lines,  in  which  the  emotions  of  his  motley  com- 
pany gasp  themselves  away! 

It  is  not  so  much  in  the  great  speeches,  noble 
as  these  are,  as  in  the  brief,  tragic  cries  and 
broken  stammerings,  that  his  unapproachable 
felicity  is  found.  "Upon  such  sacrifices,  my 
Cordelia,  the  gods  themselves  throw  incense." 
Thick  and  fast  they  crowd  upon  our  memory, 
these  little  sentences,  these  aching  rhythms! 
It  is  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  daily  Sac- 
rifice of  our  common  endurance  that  he  cele- 
brates his  strange  Mass.  Hands  that  "smell 
of  mortality,"  lips  that  "so  sweetly  were  for- 
sworn," eyes  that  "look  their  last"  on  all  they 
love,  these  are  the  touches  that  make  us  bow 
down  before  the  final  terrible  absolution.  And 
it  is  the  same  with  Nature.  Not  to  Shake- 
speare do  we  go  for  those  pseudo-scientific, 
pseudo-ethical  interpretations,  so  crafty  in 
their  word-painting,  so  cunning  in  their  ra- 
tional analysis,  which  we  find  in  the  rest.  A 
few  fierce-flung  words,  from  the  hot  heart  of 

70 


SHAKESPEARE 

an  amorist's  lust,  and  all  the  smouldering 
magic  of  the  noon-day  woods  takes  your 
breath.  A  sobbing  death-dirge  from  the 
bosom  of  a  love-lorn  child,  and  the  perfume  of 
all  the  "enclosed  gardens"  in  the  world  shud- 
ders through  your  veins. 

And  what  about  the  ancient  antagonist  of 
the  Earth?  What  about  the  Great  Deep? 
Has  anyone,  anywhere  else,  gathered  into 
words  the  human  tremor  and  the  human  recoil 
that  are  excited  universally  when  we  go  down 
"upon  the  beached  verge  of  the  salt  flood,  who 
once  a  day  with  his  embossed  froth  the  turbu- 
lent surge  doth  cover?"  John  Keats  was 
haunted  day  and  night  by  the  simple  refrain  in 
Lear,  "Canst  thou  not  hear  the  Sea?" 

Charming  Idyllists  may  count  the  petals  of 
the  cuckoo-buds  in  the  river-pastures ;  and  un- 
touched, we  admire.  But  let  old  Falstaff,  as  he 
lies  a'dying,  "babble  o'  green  fields,"  and  all 
the  long,  long  thoughts  of  youth  steal  over  us, 
like  a  summer  wind. 

The  modern  critic,  with  a  philosophic  bias, 
is  inclined  to  quarrel  with  the  obvious  human 
congruity  of  Shakespeare's  utterances.  What 
is  the  use  of  this  constant  repetition  of  the  ob- 
vious truism :  "When  we  are  born  we  cry  that 
we  are  come  to  this  great  stage  of  fools  ?" 

No  use,  my  friend!  No  earthly  use!  And 
yet  it  is  not  a  premeditated  reflection,  put  in 
"for  art's  sake."    It  is  the  poetry  of  the  pinch 

71 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

of  Fate;  it  is  the  human  revenge  we  take  upon 
the  insuhing  irony  of  our  lot. 

But  Shakespeare  does  not  always  strike  back 
at  the  gods  with  bitter  blows.  In  this  queer 
world,  where  we  have  "nor  youth,  nor  age, 
but,  as  it  were,  an  after-dinner's  sleep,  dream- 
ing on  both,"  there  come  moments  when  the 
spirit  is  too  sore  wounded  even  to  rise  in  re- 
volt. Then,  in  a  sort  of  "cheerful  despair,"  we 
can  only  wait  the  event.  And  Shakespeare  has 
his  word  for  this  also. 

Perhaps  the  worst  of  all  "the  slings  and  ar- 
rows" are  the  intolerable  partings  we  have  to 
submit  to,  from  the  darlings  of  our  soul.  And 
here,  while  he  offers  us  no  false  hope,  his  tone 
loses  its  bitterness,  and  grows  gentle  and  sol- 
emn. 

It  is — "Forever  and  forever,  farewell,  Cas- 
sius.  If  we  do  meet  again,  why  then  'tis  well ; 
if  not,  this  parting  was  well  made."  And  for 
the  Future: 

"O  that  we  knew 

The  end  of  this  day's  business  ere  it  comes! 

But  it  suffices  that  the  day  will  end; 

And  then  the  end  is  known." 


72 


EL  GRECO 


EL  GRECO 

HE  emerging  of  a  great  genius  into 
long  retarded  pre-eminence  is  al- 
ways attended  by  certain  critical 
misunderstandings.  To  a  cynical 
observer,  on  the  lookout  for  characteristic  tem- 
peramental lapses,  two  recent  interpretations 
of  El  Greco  may  be  especially  commended.  I 
mean  the  Secret  of  Toledo,  by  Maurice  Barres, 
and  an  article  in  the  ''Contemporary"  of  April, 
1914,  by  Mr.  Aubrey  Bell. 

Barres — Frenchman  of  Frenchmen — sets 
off,  with  captivating  and  plausible  logic,  to 
generalize  into  reasonable  harmlessness  this 
formidable  madman.  He  interprets  Toledo, 
appreciates  Spain,  and  patronizes  Domenico 
Theotocopoulos. 

The  Secret  of  Toledo  is  a  charming  book, 
with  illuminating  passages,  but  it  is  too  logical, 
too  plausible,  too  full  of  the  preciosity  of  dainty 
generalization,  to  reach  the  dark  and  arbitrary 
soul,  either  of  Spain  or  of  Spain's  great 
painter. 

Mr.  Bell,  on  the  contrary,  far  from  turning 

75 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

El  Greco  into  an  epicurean  cult,  drags  him 
with  a  somewhat  heavy  hand  before  the  foot- 
lights of  English  Idealism. 

He  makes  of  him  an  excuse  for  disparaging 
Velasquez,  and  launches  into  a  discourse  upon 
the  Higher  Reality  and  the  Inner  Truth  which 
leaves  one  with  a  very  dreary  feeling,  and,  by 
some  ponderous  application  of  spiritual  ropes 
and  pulleys,  seems  to  jerk  into  empty  space  all 
that  is  most  personal  and  arresting  in  the  ar- 
tist. 

If  it  is  insulting  to  the  ghostly  Toled^an  to 
smooth  him  out  into  picturesque  harmony  with 
Castillian  dances,  Gothic  cloisters  and  Moorish 
songs,  it  is  still  worse  to  transform  him  into  a 
rampant  Idealist  of  the  conventional  kind.  He 
belongs  neither  to  the  Aesthetics  nor  to  the 
Idealists.  He  belongs  to  every  individual  soul 
whose  taste  is  sufficiently  purged,  sufficiently 
perverse  and  sufficiently  passionate,  to  enter 
the  enchanted  circle  of  his  tyrannical  spell. 

When,  in  that  dark  Toledo  Church,  one 
presses  one's  face  against  the  iron  bars  that 
separate  one  from  the  Burial  of  Count  Orguz, 
it  is  neither  as  a  Dilettante  nor  an  Idealist  that 
one  holds  one's  breath.  Those  youthful  pon- 
tifical saints,  so  richly  arrayed,  offering  with 
slender  royal  hands  that  beautiful  body  to  the 
dust — is  their  mysterious  gesture  only  the 
ry thm  of  the  secret  of  Death  ? 

Those  chastened  and  winnowed  spectators, 

76 


EL  GRECO 

with  their  withdrawn,  remote  detachment — 
not  sadness — are  they  the  initiated  sentinels  of 
the  House  of  Corruption? 

At  what  figured  symbol  points  that  epicene 
child? 

Sumptuous  is  the  raiment  of  the  dead;  and 
the  droop  of  his  limbs  has  a  regal  finality;  but 
look  up!  Stark  naked,  and  in  abandoned 
weakness,  the  liberated  soul  shudders  itself 
into  the  presence  of  God! 

The  El  Greco  House  and  Museum  in  Toledo 
contains  amazing  things.  Every  one  of  those 
Apostles  that  gaze  out  from  the  wall  upon  our 
casual  devotion  has  his  own  furtive  madness, 
his  ow^n  impossible  dream!  The  St.  John  is  a 
thing  one  can  never  forget.  El  Greco  has 
painted  his  hair  as  if  it  were  literally  live  flame 
and  the  exotic  tints  of  his  flesh  have  an  em- 
phasis laid  upon  them  that  makes  one  think  of 
the  texture  of  certain  wood  orchids. 

How  irrelevant  seem  Monsieur  Barres' 
water-colour  sketches  of  prancing  Moors  and 
learned  Jews  and  picturesque  Visi-Goths,  as 
soon  as  one  gets  a  direct  glimpse  into  these 
unique  perversions !  And  why  cannot  one  go  a 
step  with  this  dreamer  of  dreams  without 
dragging  in  the  Higher  Reality?  To  regard 
work  as  mad  and  beautiful  as  this  as  anything 
but  individual  Imagination,  is  to  insult  the 
mystery  of  personality. 

n 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

El  Greco  re-creates  the  world,  in  pure,  lone- 
ly, fantastic  arbitrariness. 

His  art  do^  not  represent  the  secret  Truth 
of  the  Universe,  or  the  Everlasting  Movement ; 
it  represents  the  humour  of  El  Greco. 

Every  artist  mesmerizes  us  into  his  personal 
vision. 

A  traveller,  drinking  wine  in  one  of  those 
cafes  in  the  crowded  Zocodover,  his  head  full 
of  these  amazing  fantasies,  might  well  let  the 
greater  fantasy  of  the  world  slip  by — a  dream 
within  a  dream! 

With  El  Greco  for  a  companion,  the  gaunt 
waiter  at  the  table  takes  the  form  of  some  in- 
carcerated Don  Quixote  and  the  beggars  at 
the  window  appear  like  gods  in  disguise. 

This  great  painter,  like  the  Russian  Dos- 
toivsky,  has  a  mania  for  abandoned  weakness. 
The  nearer  to  God  his  heroic  Degenerates  get, 
the  more  feverishly  enfeebled  becomes  their 
human  will. 

Their  very  faces — with  those  retreating 
chins,  retrousse  noses,  loose  lips,  quivering 
nostrils  and  sloping  brows — seem  to  express 
the  abandonment  of  all  human  resolution  or 
restraint,  in  the  presence  of  the  Beatific  Vision 
Like  the  creatures  of  Dostoievsky,  they  seem  to 
plunge  into  the  ocean  of  the  Foolishness  of 
God,  so  much  wiser  than  the  wisdom  of  men! 
— as  dive;rs  plunge  into  a  bath. 

There  is  not  much  attempt  among  these  ec- 


78 


EL  GRECO 

statics  to  hold  on  to  the  dignity  of  their  reason 
or  the  reticence  of  their  self-respect.  Naked, 
they  fling  themselves  into  the  arms  of  Noth- 
insrness. 

This  passionate  "Movement  of  Life,"  of 
which  Mr.  Bell,  quoting  Pater's  famous  quo- 
tation from  Heraclitus,  makes  so  much,  is, 
after  all,  only  the  rush  of  the  wind  through 
the  garments  of  the  World — Denier,  as  he 
plunges  into  Eternity. 

Like  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  El  Greco's  vis- 
ionaries pass  from  the  Night  of  the  Reason  to 
the  Night  of  the  Senses ;  from  the  Night  of  the 
Senses  to  the  Night  of  Soul;  and  if  this  final 
Night  is  nothing  less  than  God  Himself,  the 
divine  submersion  does  not  bring  back  any 
mortal  daylight. 

Domenico's  portraits  have  a  character 
somewhat  different  from  his  visions.  Here, 
into  these  elongated,  bearded  hermits,  into 
these  grave,  intellectual  maniacs,  whose  look  is 
like  the  look  of  Workers  in  some  unlit  Mine, 
he  puts  what  he  knows  and  feels  of  his  own 
identity. 

They  are  diverse  masks  and  mirrors,  these 
portraits,  surfaces  of  deep  water  in  various 
lonely  valleys,  but  from  the  depths  of  them 
rises  up  the  shadow  of  the  same  lost  soul,  and 
they  are  all  ruffled  by  the  breath  of  the  same 
midnight. 

The  Crucifixion  in  the  Prado,  and  that  other, 


79 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

which,  by  some  freak  of  Providence,  has  found 
its  way  to  Philadelphia,  have  backgrounds 
which  carry  our  imagination  very  far.  Is  this 
primordial  ice,  with  its  livid  steel-blue  shadows, 
the  stuff  out  of  which  the  gods  make  other 
planets  than  ours — dead  planets,  without 
either  sun  or  star?  Are  these  the  sheer  preci- 
pices of  Chaos,  against  which  the  Redeemer 
hangs,  or  the  frozen  edges  of  the  grave  of  all 
Hfe? 

El  Greco's  magnificent  contempt  for  mater- 
ial truth  is  a  lesson  to  all  artists.  We  are  re- 
minded of  William  Blake  and  Aubrey  Beards- 
ley.  He  seems  to  regard  the  human  frame  as 
so  much  soft  clay,  upon  which  he  can  trace  his 
ecstatic  hieroglyphs,  in  defiance  both  of  anat- 
omy and  nature. 

El  Greco  is  the  true  precursor  of  our  pres- 
ent-day Matissists  and  Futurists.  He,  as  they, 
has  the  courage  to  strip  his  imagination  of  all 
mechanical  restrictions  and  let  it  go  free  to 
mould  the  world  at  its  fancy. 

What  stray  visitor  to  Madrid  would  guess 
the  vastness  of  the  intellectual  sensation  await- 
ing him  in  that  quiet,  rose-coloured  building? 

As  you  enter  the  Museum  and  pass  those 
magnificent  Titians  crowded  so  close  together 
— large  and  mellow  spaces,  from  a  more  opu- 
lent world  than  ours;  greener  branches,  bluer 
skies  and  a  more  luminous  air;  a  world 
through  which,  naturally  and  at  ease,  the  di- 

80 


EL  GRECO 

vine  Christ  may  move,  grand,  majestic,  health- 
giving,  a  veritable  god;  a  world  from  whose 
grapes  the  blood  of  satyrs  may  be  quickened, 
from  whose  corn  the  hearts  of  heroes  may  be 
made  strong — and  come  bolt  upon  El  Greco's 
glacial  northern  lights,  you  feel  that  no  fixed 
objective  Truth  and  no  traditional  Ideal  has 
a  right  to  put  boundaries  to  the  imagination 
of  man. 

Not  less  striking  than  any  of  these  is  the  ex- 
traordinary portrait  of  "Le  Roi  Ferdinand"  in 
the  great  gallery  at  the  Louvre. 

The  artist  has  painted  the  king  as  one  grown 
weary  of  his  difference  from  other  men.  His 
moon-white  armour  and  silvery  crown  show 
like  the  ornaments  of  the  dead.  Misty  and 
wavering,  the  long  shadows  upon  the  high, 
strange  brow  seem  thrown  there  by  the  pass- 
ing of  all  mortal  Illusions. 

Phantom-like  in  his  gleaming  ornaments,  a 
king  of  Lost  Atlantis,  he  waits  the  hour  of  his 
release. 

And  not  only  is  he  the  king  of  Shadows ;  he 
is  also  the  king  of  Players,  the  Player-King. 

El  Greco  has  painted  him  holding  two 
sceptres,  one  of  which,  resembling  a  Fool's 
Bauble,  is  tipped  with  the  image  of  a  naked 
hand — a  dead,  false  hand — symbol  of  the  illu- 
sion of  Power,  The  very  crown  he  wears, 
shimmering  and  unnaturally  heavy,  is  like  the 

€  81 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

crown  a  child  might  have  made  in  play,  out  of 
shells  and  sea-weed. 

The  disenchanted  irony  upon  the  face  of 
this  figure;  that  look  as  of  one  who — as  Plato 
would  have  us  do  with  kings — has  been 
dragged  back  from  Contemplation  to  the  vul- 
garity of  ruling  men;  has  been  deliberately 
blent  by  a  most  delicate  art  with  a  queer  sort 
of  fantastic  whimsicality. 

"Le  Roi  Ferdinand"  might  almost  be  an  en- 
larged reproduction  of  some  little  girl's  Doll- 
King,  dressed  up  in  silver  tinsel  and  left  out 
of  doors,  by  mistake,  some  rainy  evening. 

Something  about  him,  one  fancies,  would 
make  an  English  child  think  of  the  "White 
Knight"  in  Alice  Through  the  Looking  Glass, 
so  helpless  and  simple  he  looks,  this  poor  "Rev- 
enant,"  propped  up  by  Youthful  Imagination, 
and  with  the  dews  of  night  upon  his  armour. 

You  may  leave  these  pictures  far  behind  you 
as  you  re-cross  the  Channel,  but  you  can  never 
quite  forget  El  Greco. 

In  the  dreams  of  night  the  people  of  his 
queer  realm  will  return  and  surround  you,  ebb- 
ing and  flowing,  these  passionate  shadows, 
stretching  out  vain  arms  after  the  infinite  and 
crying  aloud  for  the  rest  they  cannot  win. 

Yes,  in  the  land  of  dreams  we  know  him,  this 
proud  despiser  of  earth! 

From  our  safe  inland  retreat  we  watch  the 
passing  of  his  Dance  of  Death,  and  we  know 

82 


EL  GRECO 

that  what  they  seek,  these  wanderers  upon  the 
wind,  is  not  our  Ideal  nor  our  Real,  not  our 
Earth  or  our  Heaven,  but  a  strange,  fairy-like 
Nirvana,  where,  around  the  pools  of  Nothing- 
ness, the  children  of  twilight  gambol  and  play. 

The  suggestive  power  of  genius  plays  us,  in- 
deed, strange  tricks.  I  have  sometimes  fancied 
that  the  famished  craving  in  the  eyes  and  nos- 
trils of  El  Greco's  saints  was  a  queer  survival 
of  that  tragic  look  which  that  earlier  Greek, 
Scopas  the  Sculptor,  took  such  pains  to  throw 
upon  the  eyelids  of  his  half-human  amphib- 
iums. 

It  might  even  seem  to  us,  dreaming  over 
these  pictures  as  the  gusts  of  an  English  au- 
tumn blow  the  fir  branches  against  the  win- 
dow, as  though  all  that  weird  population  of 
Domenico's  brain  were  tossing  their  wild, 
white  arms  out  there  and  emitting  thin,  bat- 
like cries  under  the  drifting  moon. 

The  moon — one  must  admit  that,  at  least — 
rather  than  the  sun,  was  ever  the  mistress  of 
El  Greco's  genius.  He  will  come  more  and 
more  to  represent  for  us  those  vague  uneasy 
feelings  that  certain  inanimate  and  elemental 
objects  have  the  power  of  rousing.  It  is  of 
him  that  one  must  think,  when  this  or  that 
rock-chasm  cries  aloud  for  its  Demon,  or  this 
or  that  deserted  roadway  mutters  of  its  unre- 
turning  dead. 

There  will  always  be  certain  great  artists, 

83 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

and  they  are  the  most  original  of  all  who  re- 
fuse to  su])mit  to  any  of  our  logical  categories, 
whether  scientific  or  ideal. 

To  give  one's  self  up  to  them  is  to  be  led  by 
the  hand  into  the  country  of  Pure  Imagination, 
into  the  Ultima  Thule  of  impossible  dreams. 

Like  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  this  great  painter 
can  make  splendid  use  of  the  human  probabil- 
ities of  Religion  and  Science ;  but  it  is  none  of 
these  things  that  one  finally  thinks,  as  one 
comes  to  follow  him,  but  of  things  more  sub- 
tle, more  remote,  more  translunar,  and  far 
more  imaginative. 

One  may  walk  the  streets  of  Toledo  to  seek 
the  impress  of  El  Greco's  going  and  coming; 
but  the  soul  of  Domenico  Theotocopoulos  is 
not  there. 

It  is  with  Faust,  in  the  cave  of  the  abyssmal 
"Mothers." 


84 


MILTON 


MILTON 

T  is  outrageous,  the  way  we  modern 
world-children  play  with  words. 
How  we  are  betrayed  by  words! 
How  we  betray  with  words!  We 
steal  from  one  another  and  from  the  spirit  of 
the  hour;  and  with  our  phrases  and  formulas 
and  talismans  we  obliterate  all  distinction. 
One  sees  the  modern  god  as  one  who  perpetu- 
ally apologises  and  explains;  and  the  modern 
devil  as  one  who  perpetually  apologises  and 
explains.  Everything  has  its  word-symbol,  its 
word-mask,  its  word-garment,  its  word-dis- 
grace. Nothing  comes  out  clear  into  the  open, 
unspeakable  and  inexplicable,  and  strikes  us 
dumb ! 

That  is  what  the  great  artists  do — who 
laugh  at  our  word-play.  That  is  what  Milton 
does,  who,  in  the  science  and  art  of  handling 
words,  has  never  been  equalled.  Milton,  in- 
deed, remains,  by  a  curious  fate,  the  only  one 
of  the  very  great  poets  who  has  never  been 
"interpreted"  or  "appreciated"  or  "re-created" 
by  any  critical  modern.  And  they  have  left 
him  alone ;  have  been  frightened  of  him ;  have 

87 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

not  dared  to  slime  their  "words"  over  him, 
for  the  very  reason  that  he  is  the  supreme  ar- 
tist in  words !  He  is  so  great  an  artist  that  his 
creations  detach  themselves  from  all  dimness 
— from  all  such  dimness  as  modern  "appre- 
ciation" loves — and  stand  out  clear  and  cold 
and  "unsympathetic" ;  to  be  bowed  down  be- 
fore and  worshipped,  or  left  unapproached. 

Milton  is  a  man's  poet.  It  would  be  a 
strange  thing  if  women  loved  him.  Modern 
criticism  is  a  half-tipsy  Hermaphrodite,  in  love 
only  with  what  is  on  the  point  of  turning  into 
something  else.  Milton  is  always  himself. 
His  works  of  art  are  always  themselves.  He 
and  they  are  made  of  the  same  marble,  of  the 
same  metal.  They  are  never  likely  to  change 
into  anything  else!  Milton  is,  like  all  the 
greatest  artists,  a  man  of  action.  He,  so 
learned  in  words,  in  their  history,  in  their 
weight,  in  their  origin,  in  their  evocations ;  he, 
the  scholar  of  scholars,  is  a  man,  not  of  words, 
but  of  deeds.  That  is  why  the  style  of  Milton 
is  a  thing  that  you  can  touch  with  your  out- 
stretched fingers.  It  has  been  hammered  into 
shape  by  a  hand  that  could  grasp  a  sword;  it 
has  been  moulded  into  form  by  a  brain  that 
could  dominate  a  council-chamber.  No  won- 
der we  word-maniacs  fear  to  approach  him. 
He  repels  us;  he  holds  us  back;  he  hides  his 
work-shop  from  us;  and  his  art  smites  us 
into  silent  hatred. 


88 


MILTON 

For  Milton  himself,  though  he  is  the  artist 
of  artists,  art  is  not  the  first  thing.  It  is  only 
the  first  thing  with  us  because  we  are  life's 
slaves,  and  not  its  masters.  Art  is  what  we 
protect  ourselves  with — from  life.  For  us  it 
is  a  religion  and  a  drug.  To  Milton  it  was  a 
weapon  and  a  plaything. 

Milton  was  more  interested  in  the  struggle 
of  ideas,  in  the  struggle  of  races,  in  the  strug- 
gle of  immortal  principles,  in  the  struggle  of 
gods,  in  the  great  creative  struggle  of  life  and 
death,  than  he  was  interested  in  the  exquisite 
cadences  of  words  or  their  laborious  arrange- 
ment, A  modern  artist's  heart's  desire  is  to 
escape  from  the  world  to  some  "happy  val- 
ley" and  there,  sitting  cross-legged,  like  a  Chi- 
nese Idol,  between  the  myrtle-bushes  and  the 
Lotus,  to  make  beautiful  things  in  detachment 
forever,  one  by  one,  with  no  pause  or  pain. 
Milton's  desire  was  to  take  the  whole  round 
world  between  his  hands,  with  all  the  races  and 
nations  who  dwell  upon  it,  and  mould  that,  and 
nothing  less,  into  the  likeness  of  what  he  be- 
lieved. And  in  what  did  he  believe,  this  Lord 
of  Time  and  Space,  this  accomplice  of  Jeho- 
vah? He  believed  in  Himself.  He  had  the 
unquestioning,  unphilosophical  belief  in  him- 
self which  great  men  of  action  have ;  which  the 
Caesars,  Alexanders  and  Napoleons  have,  and 
which  Shakespeare  seems  to  have  lacked. 

Milton,  though  people  have  been  misled  into 

89 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

thinking  of  him  as  very  different  from  that, 
was,  in  reahty,  the  incarnation  of  the  Nietz- 
schean  ideal.  He  was  hard,  he  was  cold,  he 
was  contemptuous,  he  was  "magnanimous," 
he  "remembered  his  whip"  when  he  went  with 
women,  he  loved  "war"  for  its  own  sake,  and 
he  dwelt  alone  on  the  top  of  the  mountains. 
To  Milton  the  world  presented  itself  as  a  place 
where  the  dominant  power,  and  the  dominant 
interest,  was  the  wrestling  of  will  with  will. 
Why  need  we  always  fuss  ourselves  about 
logical  names?  Milton,  in  reality — in  his  tem- 
perament and  his  mood — was  just  as  convinced 
of  Will  being  the  ultimate  secret  as  Schopen- 
hauer or  Nietzsche  or  Bergson  or  the  modern 
Pragmatist.  Nothing  seemed  to  him  noble,  or 
dramatic,  or  "true,"  that  did  not  imply  the 
struggle  to  the  death  of  opposing  wills. 

Milton,  in  reality,  is  less  of  a  Christian  than 
any  European  writer,  since  the  Gospel  ap- 
peared. In  his  heart,  like  Nietzsche,  he  re- 
garded the  binding  into  one  volume  of  those 
"Two  Testaments"  an  insult  to  "the  great 
style."  He  does,  indeed,  in  a  manner  find  a 
place  for  Christ,  but  it  is  the  place  of  one  demi- 
god among  many  other  demi-gods;  the  con- 
queror's place  possibly,  but  still  the  place  of 
one  in  a  hierarchy,  not  of  one  alone.  It  is 
absurd  to  quarrel  with  Milton's  deification  of 
the  Judaic  Jehovah.  Every  man  has  his  own 
God.     The  God  he  has  a  right  to.     And  the 

90 


MILTON 

Jewish  Jehovah,  after  all,  is  no  mean  Figure. 
He,  like  Milton,  was  a  God  of  War.  He,  like 
Milton,  found  "Will" — human  and  divine 
"Will"— the  central  cosmic  fact.  He,  like  Mil- 
ton, regarded  Good  and  Evil,  not  as  universal 
principles,  but  as  arbitrary  commands,  issued 
by  eternal  personal  antagonists!  It  is  one  of 
the  absurd  mistakes  into  which  our  "concep- 
tual" and  "categorical"  minds  so  easily  fall — 
this  tendency  to  eliminate  Milton's  Theology 
as  mere  Puritanical  convention,  dull  and  un- 
interesting. Milton's  Theology  was  the  most 
personal  creation  that  any  great  poet  has  ever 
dared  to  launch  upon — more  personal  even 
than  the  Theology  of  Milton's  favourite  Greek 
poet,  Euripides. 

Milton's  feeling  for  the  more  personal,  more 
concrete  aspects  of  "God"  goes  entirely  well 
with  the  rest  of  his  philosophy.  He  was,  at 
heart,  a  savage  Dualist,  who  lapsed  occasion- 
ally into  Pluralism.  He  was,  above  all,  an  In- 
dividualist of  the  most  extreme  kind — an  In- 
dividualist so  hard,  so  positive,  so  inflexible, 
that  for  him  nothing  in  the  world  really  mat- 
tered or  counted  except  the  clash  of  definite, 
clear-cut  "Wills,"  contending  against  one  an- 
other. 

Milton  is  the  least  mystical,  the  least  Pan- 
theistic, the  least  Monistic,  of  all  writers. 
That  magical  sense  of  the  brooding  Over-Soul 
which  thrills  us  so  in  Goethe's  poetry  never 

91 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

touches  his  pages.  The  Wordsworthian  inti- 
mations of  "something  far  more  deeply  inter- 
fused" never  crossed  his  sensibility;  and,  as 
far  as  he  is  concerned,  Plato  might  never  have 
existed. 

One  feels,  as  one  reads  Milton,  that  his  ul- 
timate view  of  the  universe  is  a  great  chaotic 
battlefield,  amid  the  confused  elements  of 
which  rise  up  the  portentous  figures  of 
"Thrones,  Dominations,  Principalities,  and 
Powers,"  and  in  the  struggle  between  these, 
the  most  arbitrary,  the  most  tyrannical,  the 
most  despotic,  conquers  the  rest,  and,  plant- 
ins:  his  creative  Gonfalon  further  in  the  Abvss 
than  any,  becomes  "God" ;  the  God  whose  per- 
sonal and  unrestrained  Caprice  creates  the 
Sun,  the  Moon  and  the  Stars,  out  of  Chaos; 
and  Man  out  of  the  dust  of  the  Earth.  Thus 
it  is  brought  about  that  what  this  God  wills 
is  "Good,"  and  what  his  strongest  and  most 
formidable  antagonist  wills  is  "Evil."  Be- 
tween Good  and  Evil  there  is  no  eternal  dif- 
ference, except  in  the  eternal  difference  be- 
tween the  conquering  Personality  of  Jehovah 
and  the  conquered  Personality  of  Lucifer.  So, 
far  from  it  being  true  that  Milton  is  the  dull 
transcriber  of  mere  traditional  Protestantism, 
a  very  little  investigation  reveals  the  astound- 
ing fact  that  the  current  popular  Evangelical 
view  of  the  origin  of  things  and  the  drama  of 
things  is  based,  not  upon  the  Bible  at  all,  but 

92 


MILTON 

Upon  Milton's  poem.  In  this  respecL  he  is  a 
true  Classic  Poet — a  Maker  of  Mythology — a 
Delphic  Demiurge. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  questions  in  the 
world  to  answer  would  be  the  question  how 
far  Milton  "believed,"  simply  and  directly,  in 
the  God  he  thus  half-created.  Probably  he 
did  "believe"  more  than  his  daring,  arbitrary 
"creations"  would  lead  us  to  suppose.  His  na- 
ture demanded  positive  and  concrete  facts. 
Scepticism  and  mysticism  were  both  abhorrent 
to  him;  and  it  is  more  likely  than  not  that,  in 
the  depths  of  his  strange  cold,  unapproachable 
heart,  a  terrible  and  passionate  prayer  went 
up,  day  and  night,  to  the  God  of  Isaac  and 
Jacob  that  the  Lord  should  not  forget  his  Ser- 
vant. 

The  grandeur  and  granite-like  weight  of 
Milton's  learning  was  fed  by  the  high  tradi- 
tions of  Greece  and  Rome;  but,  in  his  heart  of 
hearts,  far  deeper  than  anything  that  moved 
him  in  Aeschylus  or  Virgil,  was  the  devotion 
he  had  for  the  religion  of  Israel,  and  the  Fear 
of  Him  who  "sitteth  between  the  Cherubims." 
It  is  often  forgotten,  amid  the  welter  of  mod- 
ern ethical  ideals  and  modern  mystical  theos- 
ophies,  how  grand  and  unique  a  thing  is  this 
Religion  of  Israel — a  religion  whose  God  is  at 
once  Personal  and  Invisible.  After  all,  what 
do  we  know?  A  Prince  of  Righteousness,  a 
King  of  Sion,  a  Shepherd  of  his  People — such 

93 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

a  "Living  God"  as  David  cries  out  upon,  with 
those  dramatic  cries  that  remain  until  today 
the  most  human  and  tragic  of  all  our  race's 
wrestling  with  the  Unknown — is  this  not  a 
Faith  quite  as  "possible"  and  far  more  moving, 
than  all  the  "Over-Souls"  and  "Immanent  All- 
Fathers"  and  "Streams  of  Tendency"  which 
have  been  substituted  for  it  by  unimaginative 
modern  "breadth  of  mind"?  It  is  time  that 
it  was  made  clear  that  the  alternative  at  pres- 
ent for  all  noble  souls  is  between  the  reign  of 
"crass  CasuaHty"  and  the  reign  of  Him  "who 
maketh  the  clouds  His  chariot  and  walketh 
upon  the  wings  of  the  wind."  Those  who, 
"with  Democritus,  set  the  world  upon  Chance" 
have  a  right  to  worship  their  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, and,  in  him,  the  Eternal  Protest  against 
the  Cruelty  of  Life.  But  if  Life  is  to  be  dei- 
fied, if  Life  is  to  be  "accepted,"  if  Life  is  to  be 
worshipped;  if  Courage,  not  Love,  be  the  se- 
cret of  the  cosmic  system,  then  let  us  call  aloud 
upon  it,  under  personal  and  palpable  symbols, 
in  the  old  imaginative,  poetic  way,  rather  than 
fool  ourselves  with  thin  mysticities,  vague  in- 
tuitions, and  the  "sounding  brass"  "ethical 
ideals" ! 

The  earlier  poems  of  Milton  are  among  the 
most  lovely  in  the  English  language.  Lycidas 
is,  for  those  who  understand  what  poetry 
means,  the  most  lovely  of  all.  There  is  noth- 
ing, anywhere,  quite  like  this  poem.     The  lin- 

94 


MILTON 

gering,  elaborate  harmonies,  interrupted  in 
pause  after  pause,  by  lines  of  reverberating 
finality;  and  yet,  sweetly,  slowly  leading  on 
to  a  climax  of  such  airy,  lucid  calm — it  is  one's 
"hope  beyond  hope"  of  what  a  poem  should  be. 

The  absence  of  vulgar  sentiment,  the  clas- 
sic reserve,  the  gentle  melancholy,  the  delicate 
gaiety,  the  subtle  interweaving  of  divine, 
rhythmic  cadences,  the  ineffable  lightness  of 
touch,  as  of  cunning  fingers  upon  reluctant 
clay;  is  there  anything  in  poetry  to  equal  these 
things?  One  does  not  even  regret  the  sudden 
devastating  apparition  of  that  "two-handed 
engine  at  the  door."  For  one  remembers  how 
wickedly,  how  mercilessly,  the  beauty  of  life 
is  even  now  being  spoiled  by  these  accursed 
"hirelings" — and  now,  as  then,  "nothing  said." 

The  Nativity  Hymn  owes  half  the  charm  of 
its  easy,  natural  grace  to  the  fact  that  the  vic- 
tory of  Mary's  infant  son  over  the  rest  is 
treated  as  if  it  were  the  victory  of  one  pagan 
god  over  another — the  final  triumph  being  to 
him  who  is  the  most  "gentle"  and  "beautiful" 
of  all  the  gods.  In  the  fam.ous  argument  be- 
tween the  Lady  and  her  Tempter,  in  Comus, 
we  have  an  exquisite  example  of  the  sweet, 
grave  refinement  of  virginal  taste  which  shuns 
grossness  as  "a  false  note."  The  doctrine  of 
Comus — if  so  airy  a  thing  can  be  supposed  to 
have  a  doctrine — is  not  very  different  from  the 
doctrine  of  Marius  the  Epicurean.     One  were 

95 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

foolish  to  follow  the  bestial  enchanter;  not  so 
much  because  it  is  "wrong"  to  do  so,  as  be- 
cause, then,  one  would  lose  the  finer  edge  of 
that  heavenly  music  which  turns  the  outward 
shape  "to  the  soul's  essence." 

Milton's  Sonnets  occupy  a  place  by  them- 
selves in  English  Literature,  and  they  may 
well  be  pondered  upon  by  those  who  think  that 
the  relinquishing  of  the  "old  forms"  makes  it 
easier  to  express  one's  personality.  It  makes 
it,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  much  harder,  just  as 
the  stripping  from  human  beings  of  their  char- 
acteristic "outer  garments"  makes  them  so 
dreadfully,  so  devastatingly,  alike!  Nothing 
could  be  more  personal  than  a  Miltonic  Son- 
net. The  rigid  principles  of  form,  adhered  to 
so  scrupulously  in  the  medium  used,  intensify, 
rather  than  detract  from,  his  individualistic 
character.  That  Miltonic  wit,  so  granite-like 
and  mordant,  how  well  it  goes  with  the  magi- 
cal w^hispers  that  "syllable  men's  names" ! 

All  Milton's  personal  prejudices  may  be 
found  in  the  Sonnets,  from  his  hatred  of  those 
frightful  Scotch  appelations  that  would  "make 
Ouintlian  gasp"  to  his  longing  for  Classlic 
companionship  and  "Attic  wine"  and  "immor- 
tal notes"  and  "Tuscan  airs"!  As  one  reads 
on,  laughing  gently  at  the  folly  of  those  who 
have  so  misunderstood  him,  one  is  conscious 
more  and  more  of  that  high,  cold,  clear,  lonely 
tenderness,  which  found  so  little  satisfaction 


96 


MILTON 

in  the  sentiment  of  the  rabble  and  still  less  in 
the  endearments  of  women !  As  in  the  case  of 
''sad  Electra's  poet,"  his  own  favorite,  it  is 
easy  to  grow  angry  about  his  ''Misogyny,"  and 
take  Christian  exception  to  his  preference  for 
mistresses  over  wives.  It  is  true  that  Milton's 
view  of  marriage  is  more  than  "heathen." 
But  one  has  to  remember  that  in  these  matters 
of  purely  personal  taste  no  public  opinion  has 
right  to  intervene.  When  the  well-married 
Brownings  of  our  age  succeed  in  writing 
poetry  in  the  "grand  style,"  it  will  be  time — 
and,  perhaps,  not  even  then — to  let  the  dogs 
of  democratic  domesticity  loose  upon  this  aus- 
tere lover  of  the  classic  way. 

What  a  retort  was  "Paradise  Lost"  to  the 
lewd  revellers  who  would  have  profaned  his 
aristocratic  isolation  with  bowlings  and  bru- 
talities and  philistine  uproar!  Milton  de- 
spised "priests  and  kings"  from  the  heights  of 
a  pride  loftier  than  their  own — and  he  did  not 
love  the  vulgar  mob  much  better.  In  Paradise 
Lost  he  can  "feel  himself"  into  the  sublime 
tyranny  of  God,  as  well  as  into  the  sublime  re- 
volt of  Lucifer.  Neither  the  one  or  other 
stoops  to  solicit  "popular  voices."  The  thing 
to  avoid,  as  one  reads  this  great  poem,  are  the 
paraphrases  from  the  book  of  Genesis.  Here 
some  odd  scrupulousness  of  scholarly  con- 
science  seems  to  prevent  him   launching  out 

7  97 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

into  his  native  originality.  But,  putting  this 
aside,  what  majestic  Pandemoniums  of  terrific 
Imagination  he  has  the  power  to  call  up !  The 
opening  Books  are  as  sublime  as  the  book  of 
Job,  and  more  arresting  than  Aeschylus.  The 
basic  secrets  of  his  blank  verse  can  never  be 
revealed,  but  one  is  struck  dumb  with  wonder 
in  the  presence  of  this  Eagle  of  Poetry  as  we 
attempt  to  follow  him,  flight  beyond  flight, 
hovering  beyond  hovering,  as  he  gets  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  Sun. 

It  is  by  single  paragraphs,  all  the  same,  and 
by  single  lines,  that  I  would  myself  prefer  to 
see  him  judged.  Long  poems  have  been 
written  before  and  will  be  written  again,  but 
no  one  will  ever  write — no  one  but  Dante  has 
ever  written — such  single  lines  as  one  reads 
in  Milton.  Curiously  enough,  some  of  the 
most  staggering  of  these  superb  passages  are 
interludes  and  allusions,  rather  than  integral 
episodes  in  the  story,  and  not  only  interludes, 
but  interludes  in  the  "pagan  manner."  Second 
only  to  those  Luciferan  defiances,  which  seem 
able  to  inspire  even  us  poor  worms  with  the 
right  attitude  towards  Fate,  I  am  tempted  to 
place  certain  references  to  Astarte,  Ashtoreth 
and  Adonis.  , 

"Astarte,    queen    of    Heaven,    with    crescent 

horns,  , 

To  whose  bright  Image  nightly,  by  the  moon, 
Sidonian  virgins  paid  their  vows  and  songs." 

98 


MILTON 

Or  of  Adonis : 

"Whose  annual  wound,  in  Lebanon,  allured 
The  Syrian  damsels  to  lament  his  fate 
In  amorous  ditties  all  a  Summer's  day — " 
That  single  line,   "Whose  annual  wound,  in 
Lebanon,  allured,"  seems  to  me  better  than 
any  other  that  could  be  quoted,  to  evoke  the 
awe  and  the  thrill  and  the  seduction  of  all  true 
poetry. 

Then  those  great  mysterious  allusions  to  the 
planetary  orbits  and  the  fixed  stars  and  the 
primeval  spaces  of  land  and  sea ;  what  a  power 
they  have  of  spreading  wide  before  us  the 
huge  horizons  of  the  world's  edge!  Who  can 
forget  "the  fleecy  star  that  bears  Andromeda 
far  off  Atlantic  seas"?  Or  that  phrase  about 
the  sailors  "stemming  mightly  to  the  pole"? 
Or  the  sudden  terror  of  that  guarded  Para- 
disic Gate — "with  dreadful  faces  thronged  and 
fiery  arms"?  The  same  extraordinary  beauty 
of  single  passages  may  be  found  in  "Paradise 
Regained,"  a  poem  which  is  much  finer  than 
many  guess.  The  descriptions  there  of  the 
world-cities,  Athens,  Rome,  Jerusalem,  have 
the  same  classic  thrill  of  reserved  awe  and  in- 
finite reverence  that  some  of  Dante's  lines 
possess — only,  with  Milton,  the  thing  is  longer 
drawn  out  and  more  grandiloquent.  Satan's 
speech  about  his  own  implacable  fatality,  "his 
harbour,  and  his  ultimate  repose,"  and  that 
allusion  to  Our  Lord's  gentleness,   like  "the 

99 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

cool  intermission  of  a  summer's  cloud,"   are 
both  in  the  manner  we  love. 

It  is  only,  however,  when  one  comes  to  Sam- 
son Agonistes  that  the  full  power  of  Milton's 
genius  is  felt.  Written  in  a  style  which  the 
devotees  of  "free  verse"  in  our  time  would  do 
well  to  analyse,  it  is  the  most  complete  expres- 
sion of  his  own  individual  character  that  he 
ever  attained.  Here  the  Captain  of  Jehovah, 
here  the  champion  of  Light  against  Darkness, 
of  Pride  against  Humility,  of  Man  against 
Woman,  finds  his  opportunity  and  his  hour. 
Out  of  his  blindness,  out  of  his  loneliness,  out 
of  the  welter  of  hedonists  and  amorists  and 
feminists  and  fantasists  who  crowded  upon 
him,  the  great,  terrible  egoist  strikes  his  last 
blow!  No  one  can  read  Samson  Agonistes 
without  being  moved,  and  those  who  look  deep- 
est into  our  present  age  may  well  be  moved  the 
most !  One  almost  feels  as  if  some  great  over- 
powering tide  of  all  the  brutalities  and  crudi- 
ties and  false  sentiments  and  cunning  hypoc- 
risies, and  evil  voluptuousness,  of  all  the  Phil- 
istias  that  have  ever  been,  is  actually  rushing 
to  overwhelm  us !  Gath  and  Askalon  in  gross 
triumph — must  this  thing  be?  Will  the  Lord 
of  Hosts  lift  no  finger  to  help  his  own?  And 
then  the  end  comes ;  and  the  Euripidean  "mes- 
senger" brings  the  great  news!  He  is  dead, 
our  Champion;  but  in  his  death  he  slew  more 
than  in  his  life.     "Nothing  is  here"  for  un- 


100 


MILTON 

worthy  sorrow;  "nothing"  that  need  make  us 
"knock  the  breast;" — "No  weakness,  no  con- 
tempt, dispraise  or  blame — nothing  but  well 
and  fair,  and  what  may  quiet  us  in  a  death  so 
noble." 

And  the  end  of  Samson  Agonistes  is  as  the 
end  of  Milton's  own  life.  Awaited  in  calm 
dignity,  as  a  Roman  soldier  might  wait  for 
Caesar's  word.  Death  has  claimed  its  own. 
But  let  not  the  "daughters  of  the  uncircum- 
sized"  triumph !  Grandeur  and  nobility, 
beauty  and  heroism,  live  still;  and  while  these 
live,  what  matter  though  our  bravest  and  our 
fairest  perish?  It  only  remains  to  let  thje 
thunderbolt,  when  it  does  fall,  find  us  pre- 
pared; find  us  in  calm  of  mind,  "all  passion 
spent." 


101 


CHARLES  LAMB 


CHARLES    LAMB 

HARLES  LAMB  occupies  a  very 
curious  position  in  English  litera- 
ture and  a  very  enviable  one.  He 
is,  perhaps,  the  most  widely  known, 
and  widely  spoken  of,  of  any  stylist  we  possess, 
and  the  least  understood.  It  was  his  humour, 
while  living,  to  create  misunderstanding,  and 
he  creates  it  still.  And  yet  he  is  recognized  on 
all  sides  as  a  Classic  of  the  unapproachable 
breed.  Charles  Lamb  has  among  his  admirers 
more  uninteresting  people  than  any  great  ar- 
tist has  ever  had  except  Thackeray.  He  has 
more  academic  people  in  his  train  than  an3^one 
has  ever  had  except  Shakespeare.  And  more 
severe,  elderly,  pedantic  persons  profess  to  love 
him  than  love  anv  other  mortal  writer. 

These  people  all  read  Lamb,  talk  Lamb, 
quote  Lamb,  but  they  do  not  suggest  Lamb; 
they  do  not  "smack,"  as  our  ancestors  used  to 
say,  of  the  true  Elia  vein. 

But  the  immense  humour  of  the  situation 
does  not  stop  here.  Not  only  has  this  evasive 
City  Clerk  succeeded  in  fooling  the  "good 
people;"  he  has  fooled  the  "wicked  ones."     T 


105 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

have  myself  in  the  circle  of  my  acquaintance 
more  than  half  a  dozen  charming  people,  of  the 
type  who  enjoy  Aubrey  Beardsley,  and  have  a 
mania  for  Oscar  Wilde,  and  sometimes  dip  into 
Remy  de  Gourmont,  and  not  one  of  them  "can 
read"  Charles  Lamb.  He  has  succeeded  in 
fooling  them;  in  making  them  suppose  he  is 
something  quite  different  from  what  he  is.  He 
used  to  tell  his  friends  that  every  day  he  felt 
himself  growing  more  ''official"  and  "moral." 
He  even  swore  he  had  been  taken  for  a  Ver- 
ger or  a  Church  warden.  Well,  our  friends  of 
the  "enclosed  gardens"  still  take  him  for  a  Ver- 
ger. But  he  is  a  more  remarkable  Verger  than 
they  dream.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  were 
some  extremely  daring  and  modern  spirits  in 
Elia's  "entourage,"  spirits  who  went  further  in 
an  antinomian  direction  than — I  devoutly 
pray — my  friends  are  ever  likely  to  go,  and 
these  scandalous  ones  adored  him.  And  for  his 
part,  he  seems  to  have  liked  them — more  than 
he  ought. 

It  is,  indeed,  very  curious  and  interesting, 
the  literary  fate  of  Charles  Lamb.  Jocular 
Bishops,  archly  toying  Rural  Deans,  Rectors 
with  a  "penchant"  for  anecdote,  scholarly 
Canons  with  a  weakness  for  Rum  Punch,  are 
all  inclined  to  speak  as  if  in  some  odd  way  he 
was  of  their  own  very  tribe.  He  had  abso- 
lutely nothing  in  common  with  them,  except  a 
talent  for  giving  false  impressions!    With  re- 

106 


CHARLES  LAMB 

gard  to  the  devotion  to  him  which  certain  gen- 
tle and  old-fashioned  ladies  have — one's  great- 
aunts,  for  instance — I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
much  more  might  be  said.  There  is  a  quality, 
a  super-refined,  exquisite  quality,  and  one  with 
a  pinch  of  true  ironic  salt  in  it,  which  the  more 
thick-skinned  among  us  sensationalists  may 
easily  miss. 

It  is  all  very  well  for  us  to  talk  of  "burning 
with  a  hard  gem-like  flame,"  when,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  we  move  along,  dull  as  cave-men,  to 
some  of  the  finest  aesthetic  effects  in  the  world. 
Not  to  appreciate  the  humour  of  that  rarest 
and  sweetest  of  all  human  types,  the  mis- 
chievous-tongued  Great-Aunt,  is  to  be  nothing 
short  of  a  profane  fool. 

But  Charles  Lamb  is  a  very  different  person 
from  our  Goldsmiths  and  Cowpers  and  Aus- 
tens, and  their  modern  representatives.  It 
needs  something  else  in  a  Great-Aunt  than 
old-fashioned  irony  to  appreciate  him.  It 
needs  an  imagination  that  is  very  nearly 
"Shakespearean,"  and  it  needs  a  passion  for 
beautiful  style  of  which  a  Flaubert  or  an  Ana- 
tole  France  might  be  proud. 

So  here  we  have  the  old  sly  Elia,  fooling 
people  now  as  he  fooled  them  in  his  lifetime, 
and  a  riddle  both  to  the  godly  and  the  ungodly. 
The  great  Goethe,  whose  Walpurgis  Night 
"He- Apes"  made  Elia  put  out  his  tongue,  read, 
we  learn,  with  no  little  pleasure  some  fantas- 

107 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

tic  skit  of  this  incorrigible  one.  Did  he  dis- 
cern— the  subHme  Olympian — what  a  cunning 
flute  player  lurked  under  the  queer  mask? 
"Something  ]:)etween  a  Jew,  a  Gentleman  and 
an  Angel"  he  liked  to  fancy  he  looked ;  and  one 
must  confess  that  in  the  subtlest  of  all  senses 
of  that  word,  a  gentleman  he  was. 

Lamb's  "essays"  were  written  at  ofl  hours, 
when  he  could  escape  from  his  office.  Once 
completely  freed  from  the  necessity  of  office 
work,  his  writing  lost  its  magic.  His  genius 
was  of  that  peculiarly  delicate  texture  which 
requires  the  stimulus  of  reaction.  One  cannot 
be  too  grateful  that  the  incomparable  Pater, 
after  Lamb  himself,  perhaps,  the  greatest  mas- 
ter of  English  prose,  found  it  necessary  to  ut- 
ter his  appreciation.  Pater,  as  usual,  hits  the 
mark  with  an  infallible  hand  when  he  speaks 
of  that  overhanging  Sophoclean  tragedy  which 
darkened  Lamb's  earlier  days  and  never  quite 
left  him. 

It  is,  of  course,  this,  the  sense  of  one  living 
always  on  the  edge  of  a  precipice,  that  gives 
such  piquancy  and  charm  to  Elia's  mania  for 
"little  things."  Well  might  he  turn  to  "little 
things,"  w^hen  great  things — his  Sun  and  his 
Moon — had  been  turned  for  him  to  Blood! 
But,  as  Pater  suggests,  there  is  "Philosophy" 
in  all  this,  and  more  Philosophy  than  many 
suppose.  It  is  unfortunate  that  the  unworldly 
Coleridge  and  the  worldly  Thackeray  should 

108 


CHARLES  LAMB 

have  both  pilchcd  upon  Lamb's  "saintliness" 
to  make  copy  of.  Nothing  infuriated  him  more 
than  such  a  tone  towards  himself.  And  he  was 
rig-ht  to  be  infuriated.  His  "unselfishness," 
his  "sweetness,"  of  which  these  good  men  make 
so  much,  were  only  one  aspect  of  the  Philos- 
ophy of  his  whole  life.  Lamb  was,  in  his  life, 
a  great  epicurean  philosopher,  as,  in  all  prob- 
ability, many  other  "saints"  have  been.  The 
things  in  him  that  fretted  Carlyle,  his  fits  of 
intoxication,  his  outbursts  of  capricious  imp- 
ishness,  his  perversity  and  his  irony,  were  just 
as  much  part  of  the  whole  scheme  as  were  his 
celibacy  and  his  relation  to  his  sister. 

What  one  can  really  gather  from  Lamb  is 
nothing  less  than  a  very  wise  and  very  subtle 
"way  of  life,"  a  way  that,  amid  many  outrage- 
ous experiences,  will  be  found  singularly  lucky. 

In  the  first  place,  let  it  be  noted.  Lamb  de- 
liberately cultivates  the  art  of  "transforming 
the  commonplace."  It  is  as  absurd  to  deny  the 
existence  of  this  element — from  which  we  all 
suffer — as  it  is  to  maintain  that  it  cannot  be 
changed.  It  can  be  changed.  That  is  pre- 
cisely what  this  kind  of  rare  genius  does.  It 
is  a  miracle,  of  course,  but  everything  in  art 
is  a  miracle. 

Nature  tosses  out  indiscriminately  her  mot- 
ley productions,  and  if  you  are  born  for  such 
"universalism,"  you  may  swallow  them  whole- 
sale.   The  danger  of  such  a  downright  manner 

109 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

of  going  to  work  is  that  it  blunts  one's  critical 
sense.  If  you  swallow  everything  just  as  it  is, 
you  taste  very  little.  But  Charles  Lamb  is 
nothing  if  not  "critical,"  nothing  if  not  an  Epi- 
cure, and  his  manner  of  dealing  with  the  "com- 
monplace" sharpens  rather  than  blunts  the 
edge  of  one's  taste. 

And  what  is  this  manner  ?  It  is  nothing  less 
than  an  indescribable  blending  of  Christianity 
and  Paganism.  Heine,  another  of  Carlyle's 
"blackguards,"  achieves  the  same  synthesis. 
It  is  this  spiritual  achievement — at  once  a  re- 
ligious and  an  aesthetic  triumph — that  makes 
Elia,  for  all  his  weaknesses,  such  a  really  great 
man.  The  Wordsworths  and  Coleridges  who 
patronized  him  were  too  self-opiniated  and  in- 
dividualistic to  be  able  to  enter  into  either  tra- 
dition. 

Wordsworth  is  neither  a  Christian  or  a 
Pagan.  He  is  a  moral  philosopher,  Elia  is 
an  artist,  who  understands  the  importance  of 
ritual  in  life — but  of  naturalness  in  ritual. 

How  difficult,  whether  as  a  thinker  or  a  man, 
is  it  to  be  natural  in  one's  loves  and  hates! 
How  many  quite  authoritative  Philistines 
never  really  let  the  world  know  how  Bohemian 
at  heart  they  are !  And  how  much  of  our  mod- 
ern "artistic  feeling"  is  a  pure  affectation! 
Now,  whatever  Elia  was  not,  he  was  wantonly, 
wickedly,  whimsically  natural. 

He  never  concealed  his  religious  feelings, 

110 


CHARLES  LAMB 

his  superstitious  feelings.  He  never  concealed 
his  fancies,  his  fads,  his  manias,  his  vices.  He 
never  concealed  his  emotion  when  he  felt  a 
thrill  of  passionate  faith.  He  never  concealed 
it  when  he  felt  a  thrill  of  blasphemous  doubt. 

He  accepted  life's  little  pleasures  as  they  ap- 
peared, and  did  not  hesitate  to  make  "cults" 
of  the  ones  that  appeared  most  appealing.  If 
he  had  Philistine  feelings,  he  indulged  them 
without  shame.  If  he  had  recondite  and  "ar- 
tistic" feelings,  he  indulged  them  also  without 
shame.  He  is  one  of  the  few  great  men  not 
afraid  to  be  un-original,  and  hence  he  is  the 
most  original  of  all.  "I  cannot,"  says  he,  "sit 
and  think.  Books  think  for  me."  Well,  books 
did  "think  for  him,"  for  he  managed  to  press 
the  books  of  the  great  poets  into  his  service,  as 
no  mortal  writer  has  ever  dared  to  do  before. 
And  he  could  do  it  without  impairing  his  orig- 
inality, because  he  was  as  original  as  the  great 
poets  he  used.  We  say  deliberately  "poets," 
for,  as  Pater  points  out,  to  find  Lamb's  rivals 
in  sheer  imaginative  genius,  we  have  to  leave 
the  company  of  those  who  write  prose. 

Do  the  humorous  ecclesiastics  and  scholarly 
tutors  who  profess  to  understand  Elia  ever 
peep  into  that  Essay  called  "Witches,"  or  that 
other  Essay  called  "A  Child- Angel"  ?  There 
are  things  here  that  are  written  for  a  very 
different  circle.  Certain  sentences  in  "Dream- 
children,"  too,  have  a  beauty  that  takes  a  natu- 

111 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ral  man's  breath  completely  away.  Touches 
of  far-off  romance,  terrible  and  wistful  as 
"anonymous  ballads,"  alternate  with  gestures 
of  Rabelaisian  humour,  such  as  generous 
souls  love.  Elia's  style  is  the  only  thing  in 
English  prose  that  can  be  called  absolutely 
perfect.  Compared  with  the  rich,  capricious, 
wilful,  lingering  by  the  way  of  Lamb's  man- 
ner. Pater's  is  precise,  demure  and  over-grave, 
Wilde's  fantastic  and  over-provocative,  Rus- 
kin's  intolerably  rhetorical. 

Into  what  other  prose  style  could  the  magic 
of  Shakespeare's  "little  touches"  be  drawn,  or 
the  high  melancholy  of  Milton's  imagery  be 
led,  without  producing  a  frightful  sense  of  the 
incongruous?  He  can  quote  them  both — or 
any  other  great  old  master — and  if  it  were  not 
for  the  "inverted  commas"  we  should  not  be 
aware  of  the  insertion. 

Elia  cannot  say  anything,  not  the  simplest 
thing,  without  giving  it  a  turn,  a  tw^ist,  a  lift, 
a  lightness,  a  grace,  that  would  redeem  the 
very  grease-spots  on  a  scullion's  apron! 

There  is  no  style  in  the  world  like  it.  Ger- 
many, France,  Italy,  Russia  have  no  Charles 
Lamb.  Their  Flauberts  and  D'Annunzios  be- 
long to  a  different  tribe.  Even  Turgenieff, 
just  because  he  has  to  "get  on  with  his  story," 
cannot  do  precisely  this. 

Every  single  one  of  the  "essays"  and  most 
of  the  "letters"   can  be   read  over   and  over 


112 


CHARLES  LAMB 

again,  and  their  cadences  caressed  as  if  they 
were  Hving  people's  features.  And  they  are 
Hving.  They  are  as  Hving  as  those  Japanese 
Prints  so  maddening  to  some  among  us,  or  as 
the  drawings  of  Lionardo.  They  also — in 
their  place — are  "pure  line,"  to  use  the  ardent 
modern  slang,  and  unpolluted  ''imaginative 
suggestion." 

The  mistake  our  "aesthetes"  made,  these 
lovers  of  Egyptian  dancers  and  Babylonian 
masks,  is  that  they  suppose  the  simplicity  of 
Lamb's  subjects  debar  him  from  the  rare  ef- 
fects. Ah!  They  little  know!  He  can  take 
the  wistfulness  of  children,  and  the  quaint  ges- 
tures of  dead  Comedians,  and  the  fantasies  of 
old  worm-eated  folios,  and  the  shadows  of  sun- 
dials upon  cloistered  lawns,  and  the  heart- 
breaking evasions  of  such  as  "can  never  know 
love,"  and  out  of  these  things  he  can  make  a 
music  as  piteous  and  lovely  as  Ophelia's  songs. 
It  is  a  curious  indication  of  the  lack  of  real 
poetic  feeling  in  the  feverish  art-neophytes  of 
our  age  that  they  should  miss  these  things  in 
Elia.  One  wonders  if  they  have  ever  felt  the 
remote  translunar  beauty  that  common  faces 
and  old,  dim,  pitiful  things  can  wear  some- 
times. It  would  seem  not.  Like  Llerod  the 
Tetrarch,  they  must  have  "Peacocks  whose 
crying  calls  the  rain,  and  the  spreading  of 
their  tails  brings  down  the  Moon;"  they  must 
have  "opals  that  burn  with  flame  as  cold  as 

8  113 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ice,"  and  onyxes  and  amber  and  the  tapestries 
of  Tyre.  The  pansies  that  "are  for  thoughts" 
touch  them  not  and  the  voices  of  the  street- 
singers  leave  them  cold. 

It  is  precisely  the  lack  of  natural  kindly 
humour  in  these  people,  who  must  always  be 
clutching  "cameos  from  Syracuse"  between 
their  fingers,  which  leads  them,  when  the  ten- 
sion of  the  "gem-like  flame"  can  be  borne  no 
more,  into  sheer  garishness  and  brutality.  One 
knows  it  so  well,  that  particular  tone ;  the  tone 
of  the  jaded  amorist,  for  whom  "the  unspeak- 
able rural  solitudes"  and  "the  sweet  security 
of  streets"  mean,  both  of  them,  boredom  and 
desolation. 

It  is  not  their  subtlety  that  makes  them  thus 
suffer;  it  is  their  lack  of  it.  What?  Is  the 
poignant  world-old  play  of  poor  mortal  men 
and  women,  with  their  absurdities  and  ex- 
cesses, their  grotesque  reserves  and  fantastic 
confessions,  their  advances  and  withdrawals, 
not  interesting  enough  to  serve?  It  serves 
sufficiently ;  it  serves  well  enough,  when  genius 
takes  it  in  hand.  Perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  that 
which  is  lacking. 

Charles  Lamb  went  through  the  world  with 
many  avoidances,  but  one  thing  he  did  not 
avoid — the  innocence  of  unmitigated  foolish- 
ness! He  was  able  to  give  to  the  Simple 
Simons  of  this  life  that  Rabelaisian  touch  of 
magnanimous     understanding    which    makes 

114 


CHARLES  LAMB 

even  the  leanest  wits  among  us  glow.  He  went 
through  the  world  with  strange  timidities  and 
no  daring  stride.  He  loitered  in  its  by-alleys. 
He  drifted  through  its  Bazaars.  He  sat  with 
the  crowd  in  its  Circuses.  He  lingered  outside 
its  churches.  He  ate  his  *'pot  of  honey"  among 
its  graves.  And  as  he  went  his  way,  irritable 
and  freakish,  wayward  and  arbitrary,  he  came, 
by  chance,  upon  just  those  side-lights  and  inti- 
mations, those  rumours  and  whispers,  those 
figures  traced  on  sand  and  dust  and  water, 
which,  more  than  all  the  Law  and  the  Prophets, 
draw  near  to  the  unuttered  word. 


115 


DICKENS 


DICKENS 

T  is  absurd,  of  course,  to  think  that 
it  is  necessary  to  "hold  a  brief"  for 
Dickens.  But  sometimes,  when  one 
comes  across  charming  and  exquis- 
ite people  who  "cannot  read  him,"  one  is 
tempted  to  give  one's  personal  appreciation 
that  kind  of  form. 

Dickens  is  one  of  the  great  artists  of  the 
world,  and  he  is  so,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  in 
certain  spheres,  in  the  sphere  of  Sex,  for  in- 
stance, or  the  sphere  of  Philosophy,  he  is  such 
a  hopeless  conventionalist.  It  is  because  we 
are  at  this  hour  so  preoccupied  with  Sex,  in 
our  desire  to  readjust  the  conventions  of  So- 
ciety and  Morality  towards  it,  that  a  great  ar- 
tist, who  simply  leaves  it  out  altogether,  or 
treats  it  with  a  mixture  of  the  conventionality 
of  the  preacher  and  the  worst  foolishness  of 
the  crowd,  is  an  artist  whose  appeal  is  seri- 
ously handicapped. 

Yet,  given  this  "lacuna,"  this  amazing 
"gap"  in  his  work,  a  deprivation  much  more 
serious  than  his  want  of  "philosophy,"  Dickens 
is  a  writer  of  colossal  genius,  whose  original- 

119 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ity  and  vision  puts  all  our  modern  "literateurs" 
to  shame.  One  feels  this  directly  one  opens 
any  volume  of  his.  Only  a  great  creative  gen- 
ius could  so  dominate,  for  instance,  his  mere 
"illustrators,"  as  to  mesmerize  them  complete- 
ly into  his  manner.  And  certainly  his  illus- 
trators are  drugged  with  the  Dickens  atmos- 
phere. Those  hideous-lovely  persons,  whose 
legs  and  arms  are  so  thin  that  it  is  impossible 
to  suppose  they  ever  removed  their  clothes ;  do 
they  not  strut  and  leer  and  ogle  and  grin  and 
stagger  and  weep,  in  the  very  style  of  their 
author  ? 

Remembering  my  "brief,"  and  the  sort  of 
jury,  among  my  friends,  I  have  to  persuade,  I 
am  not  inclined  in  this  sketch  to  launch  out 
into  panegyrics  upon  Mr.  Micawber  and  Mrs. 
Gamp  and  Mr.  Pecksniff  and  Betsy  Trotwood 
and  Bill  Sikes  and  Dick  Swiveller  and  Bob 
Sawyer  and  Sam  Weller  and  Mark  Tapley  and 
Old  Scrooge.  The  mere  mention  of  these 
names,  which,  to  some,  would  suggest  the 
music  of  the  spheres,  to  others  would  suggest 
forced  merriment,  horrible  Early  Victorian 
sentiment,  and  that  sort  of  hackneyed  "unc- 
tion" of  sly  moral  elders,  which  is  youth's  espe- 
cial Hell.  Much  wiser  were  it,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  to  indicate  what  in  Dickens — in  his  style, 
his  method,  his  vision,  his  art — actually  ap- 
peals to  one  particular  mind.  I  think  it  is  to 
be  found  in  his  childlike  Imagination.     Now, 

120 


DICKENS 

the  modern  cult,  for  children  has  reached  such 
fantastic  limits  that  one  has  to  be  very  care- 
ful when  one  uses  that  word.  But  Dickens  is 
childlike,  not  as  Oscar  Wilde — that  Uranian 
Baby — or  as  Paul  Verlaine — that  little  ''pet 
lamb"  of  God — felt  themselves  to  be  childlike, 
or  as  the  artificial-minded  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  fooled  his  followers  into  thinking 
him.  He  is  really  and  truly  childlike.  His 
imagination  and  vision  are  literally  the  imagi- 
nation and  vision  of  children.  We  have  not 
all  played  at  Pirates  and  Buccaneers.  We 
have  not  all  dreamed  of  Treasure-Islands  and 
Marooned  sailors.  We  have  not  all  "believed 
in  Fairies."  These  rather  tiresome  and  over- 
rung-upon  aspects  of  children's  fancies  are,  af- 
ter all,  very  often  nothing  more  than  middle- 
aged  people's  damned  affectations.  The  chil- 
dren's cult  at  the  present  day  plays  strange 
tricks. 

But  Dickens,  from  beginning  to  end,  has 
the  real  touch,  the  authentic  reaction.  How 
should  actual  and  living  children,  persecuted 
by  "New  Educational  Methods,"  glutted  with 
toys,  depraved  by  "understanding  sympathy," 
and  worn  out  by  performances  of  "Peter  Pan," 
believe — really  and  truly — in  fairies  any 
more  ?  But,  in  spite  of  sentimental  Child-wor- 
shippers, let  us  not  hesitate  to  whisper:  "It 
doesn't  matter  in  the  least  if  they  don't!" 
The    "enlightened"    and    cultivated    mothers, 

121 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

who  grow  unhappy  when  they  find  their  dar- 
lings cold  to  Titania  and  Oberon  and  to  the 
more  "poetic"  modern  fairies,  with  the  funny 
names,  may  rest  in  peace.  If  the  house  they 
inhabit  and  the  street  they  inhabit  be  not  sani- 
tarized  and  art-decorated  beyond  all  human 
interest,  they  may  let  their  little  ones  alone. 
They  will  dream  their  dreams.  They  will  in- 
vent their  games.  They  will  talk  to  their 
shadows.  They  will  blow  kisses  to  the  Moon. 
And  all  will  go  well  with  "the  Child  in  the 
House,"  even  if  he  has  not  so  much  as  even 
heard  of  "the  Blue  Bird" ! 

If  these  uncomfortably  "childlike"  people 
read  Dickens,  they  would  know  how  a  child 
really  does  regard  life,  and  perhaps  they  would 
be  a  little  shocked.  For  it  is  by  no  means  only 
the  "romantic"  and  "aesthetic"  side  of  things 
that  appeals  to  children.  They  have  their 
nightmares,  poor  imps,  and  such  devils  follow 
them  as  older  people  never  dream  of.  Dickens 
knew  all  that,  and  in  his  books  the  thrill  of 
the  supernatural,  as  it  hovers  over  chairs  and 
tables  and  pots  and  pans,  is  never  far  away.  It 
lurks,  that  repelling-alluring  Terror,  in  a 
thousand  simple  places.  It  moves  in  the  dark- 
ness of  very  modern  cupboards.  It  hides  in 
the  recesses  of  very  modern  cellars.  It 
pounces  out  from  the  eaves  of  quite  modern 
attics.     It  is  there,  halfway  up  the  Staircase. 

122 


DICKENS 

It  is  there,  halfway  down  the  Passage.  And 
God  knows  whither  it  comes  or  where  it  goes ! 

To  endow  the  little  every-day  objects  that 
surround  us — a  certain  picture  in  a  certain 
light,  a  certain  clock  or  stove  in  a  certain 
shadow,  a  certain  corner  of  the  curtain  when 
the  wind  moves  it — with  the  fetish-magic  of 
natural  "animism";  that  is  the  real  childlike 
trick,  and  that  is  what  Dickens  does.  It  is,  of 
course,  something  not  confined  to  people  who 
are  children  in  years.  It  is  the  old,  sweet 
Witch-Hag,  Mystery,  that,  sooner  or  later, 
has  us  all  by  the  throat! 

And  that  is  why,  to  me,  Dickens  is  so  great 
a  writer.  Since  men  have  come  to  live  so  much 
in  cities;  since  houses  and  streets  and  rooms 
and  passages  and  windows  and  basements 
have  come  to  mean  more  to  them  than  fields 
and  woods,  it  is  essential  that  "the  Old  Man 
covered  with  a  Mantle,"  the  Ancient  of  An- 
cients, the  Disturber  of  Rational  Dreams, 
should  move  into  the  town,  too,  and  mutter 
and  murmur  in  its  shadows ! 

How  hard  a  thing  is  it,  to  put  into  words  the 
strange  attraction  and  the  strange  terror 
which  the  dwellings  of  mortal  men  have  the 
power  of  exciting!  To  drift  at  nightfall  into 
an  unknown  town,  and  wander  through  its 
less  frequented  ways,  and  peep  into  its  dark, 
empty  churches,  and  listen  to  the  wind  in  the 
stunted  trees  that  grow  by  its   Prison,   and 

123 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

watch  some  flickering  particular  light  high 
up  in  some  tall  house — the  light  of  a  harlot,  a 
priest,  an  artist,  a  murderer — surely  there  is 
no  imaginative  experience  equal  to  this! 
Then,  the  things  one  sees,  by  chance,  by  acci- 
dent, through  half-open  doors  and  shutter- 
chinks  and  behind  lifted  curtains!  Verily  the 
ways  of  men  upon  earth  are  past  finding  out, 
and  their  madness  beyond  interpretation! 

It  is  not  only  children — and  yet  it  is  chil- 
dren most  of  all — who  get  the  sense,  in  a 
weird,  sudden  flash,  of  the  demonic  life  of  in- 
animate things.  Why  are  our  houses  so  full 
of  things  that  one  had  better  not  look  at, 
things  that,  like  the  face  of  Salome,  had  better 
be  seen  in  mirrors,  and  things  that  must  be 
forbidden  to  look  at  us?  The  houses  of  mor- 
tal men  are  strange  places.  They  are  sepul- 
chres and  cemeteries.  Dungeons  are  they,  and 
prison  cells.  Not  one  of  them  but  have  mur- 
derous feet  going  up  and  down.  Not  one  of 
them  but  have  ravisher's  hands,  fumbling, 
back  and  forth,  along  the  walls.  For  the  se- 
cret wishes,  and  starved  desires,  and  mad 
cravings,  and  furious  revolts,  of  the  hearts  of 
men  and  women,  living  together  decently  in 
their  "homes,"  grow  by  degrees  palpable  and 
real  and  gather  to  themselves  strange  shapes. 

No  writer  who  has  ever  lived  can  touch 
Dickens  in  indicating  this  sort  of  familiar 
sorcery  and  the  secret  of  its  terror.     For  it  is 

124 


DICKENS 

children,  more  than  any,  who  are  conscious 
how  "haunted"  all  manner  of  places  and  things 
are.  And  people  themselves!  The  searching 
psychologists  are  led  singularly  astray.  They 
peer  and  pry  and  repine,  and  all  the  while  the 
real  essence  of  the  figure  lies  in  its  momentary 
expression — in  its  most  superficial  gesture. 

Dickens'  world  is  a  world  of  gnomes  and 
hob-goblins,  of  ghouls  and  of  laughing  angels. 
The  realist  of  the  Thackeray  School  finds  noth- 
ing  but    monstrous    exaggeration    here — and 
fantastic  mummery.     If  he  were  right,  par- 
dieu!    If  his  sleek  "reaHty"  were  all  that  there 
was — "alarum !"   We  were  indeed  "betrayed"  ! 
But  no;  the  children  are  right.     Dickens   is 
right.      Neither    "realist"    or    "psychologist" 
hits  the  mark,  when  it  comes  to  the  true  diab- 
lerie  of   living   people.      There   is    something 
more  whimsical,  more  capricious,  more  unreal, 
than  philosophers  suppose  about  this  human 
pantomime.      People    are    actually — as    every 
child   knows — much   worse   and   much   better 
than  thev  "ought"  to  be.     And,  as  everv  child 
knows,   too,  they  tune  their   souls  up  to  the 
pitch    of    their    "masks."      The    surface    of 
things  is  the  heart  of  things ;  and  the  protruded 
goblin-tongue,  the  wagged  head,  the  groping 
fingers,  the  shuffling  step,  are  just  as  signifi- 
cant  of   the   mad   play-motif   as    any   hidden 
thoughts.     People  think  with  their  bodies,  and 
their  looks  and  gestures;  nay!  their  very  gar- 


125 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ments  are  words,  tones,  whispers,  in  their  gen- 
eral Confession. 

The  world  of  Dickens'  fantastic  creations  is 
all  the  nearer  to  the  truth  of  our  life  because 
it  is  so  arbitrary  and  "impossible."  He  seems 
to  go  backwards  and  forwards  with  a  torch, 
throwing  knobs,  jags,  wrinkles,  corrugations, 
protuberancies,  cavities,  horns,  and  snouts  into 
terrifying  illumination.  But  we  are  like  that! 
That  is  what  we  actually  are.  That  is  how  the 
Pillar  of  Fire  sees  us.  Then,  again,  are  we  to 
limit  our  interest,  as  these  modern  writers  do, 
to  the  beautiful  people  or  the  interesting  people 
or  the  gross,  emphatic  people.  Dickens  is 
never  more  childlike  than  when  he  draws  us, 
wonderingly  and  confidingly,  to  the  stark 
knees  of  a  Mrs.  Pipchin,  or  when  he  drives  us 
away,  in  unaccountable  panic-terror,  from  the 
rattling  jet-beads  of  a  Miss  Murdstone. 

Think  of  the  vast,  queer,  dim-lighted  world 
wherein  live  and  move  all  those  funny,  dusty, 
attenuated,  heart-breaking  figures,  of  such  as 
wear  the  form  of  women — and  yet  may  never 
know  "love" !  It  is  wonderful — when  you 
think  of  it — how  much  of  absorbing  interest 
is  left  in  life,  when  you  have  eliminated  "sex," 
suppressed  "psychology,"  and  left  philosophy 
out!  Then  appear  all  those  queer  attractions 
and  repulsions  which  are  purely  superficial, 
and  even  material,  and  yet  which  are  so  domi- 
nant.    Mother  of  God!     How  unnecessary  to 

126 


DICKENS 

bring  in  Fairies  and  Blue  Birds,  when  the 
solemnity  of  some  little  seamstress  and  her 
sorceress  hands,  and  the  quaint  knotting  of 
her  poor  wisp  of  hair,  would  be  enough  to 
keep  a  child  staring  and  dreaming  for  hours 
upon  hours! 

Life  in  a  great  city  is  like  life  in  an  en- 
chanted forest.  One  never  knows  what  hide- 
ous ogre  or  what  exquisite  hamadryad  one 
may  encounter.  And  the  little  ways  of  all 
one's  scrabbling  and  burrowing  and  chuckling 
and  nodding  and  winking  house-mates!  To 
go  through  the  world  expecting  adventures  is 
to  find  them  sooner  or  later.  But  one  need 
only  cross  one's  threshold  to  find  one  adven- 
ture— the  adventure  of  a  new,  unknown  fel- 
low-creature, full  of  suspicion,  full  of  cloudy 
malice,  full  of  secretive  dreams,  and  yet  ready 
to  respond — poor  devil — to  a  certain  kind  of 
signal ! 

Long  reading  of  Dickens'  books,  like  long 
living  with  children,  gives  one  a  wholesome 
dread  of  cynicism  and  flippancy.  Children's 
games  are  more  serious  than  young  men's 
love-afifairs,  and  they  must  be  treated  so.  It 
is  not  exactly  that  life  is  to  be  "taken  seri- 
ously." It  is  to  be  taken  for  what  it  is — an  ex- 
traordinary Pantomime.  The  people  who  will 
not  laugh  with  Pierrot  because  his  jokes  are 
so  silly,  and  the  people  who  will  not  cry  with 
Columbine  because  her  legs  are  so  thin,  may 

127 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

be  shrewd  psychologists  and  fastidious  ar- 
tists— but,  God  help  them!  they  are  not  in  the 
game. 

The  romance  of  city-life  is  one  thing.  The 
romance  of  a  particular  city  leads  us  further. 
Dickens  has  managed  to  get  the  inner  identity 
of  London;  what  is  permanent  in  it;  what  can 
be  found  nowhere  else ;  as  not  even  Balzac  got 
hold  of  Paris.  London  is  terrible  and  ghastly. 
One  knows  that;  but  the  wretchedest  of  its 
''gamins"  knows  that  it  is  something  else  also. 
More  than  any  place  on  earth  it  seems  to  have 
that  weight,  that  mass,  that  depth,  that  four- 
square solidity,  which  reassures  and  comforts, 
in  the  midst  of  the  illusions  of  life.  It  descends 
so  far,  with  its  huge  human  foundations,  that 
it  gives  one  the  impression  of  a  monstrous 
concrete  Base,  sunk  into  eternity,  upon  which, 
for  all  its  accummulated  litter  and  debris,  man 
will  be  able  to  build,  perhaps  has  begun  already* 
to  build,  his  Urbs  Beata.  And  Dickens  en- 
tered with  dramatic  clairvoyance  into  every 
secret  of  this  Titanic  mystery.  He  knew  its 
wharfs,  its  bridges,  its  viaducts,  its  alleys,  its 
dens,  its  parks,  its  squares,  its  churches,  its 
morgues,  its  circuses,  its  prisons,  its  hospitals, 
and  its  mad-houses.  And  as  the  human  atoms 
of  that  fantastic,  gesticulating,  weeping,  grin- 
ning crowd  of  his  dance  their  crazy  ''Carmag- 
nole," we  cannot  but  feel  that  somehow  we 


128 


DICKENS 

must  gather  strength  and  friendHness  enough 
to  applaud  such  a  tremendous  Performance. 

Dickens  was  too  great  a  genius  to  confine 
his  demonic  touch  to  the  town  alone.  There 
are  suggestions  of  his,  relating  to  country 
roads  and  country  Inns  and  country  solitudes, 
like  nothing  else,  except,  perhaps,  the  Vig- 
nettes of  Berwick.  He  carries  the  same  "ani- 
mism" into  this  also.  And  he  notes  and  re- 
cords sensations  of  the  most  evasive  kind. 
The  peculiar  terror  we  feel,  for  instance, 
mixed  with  a  sort  of  mad  pity,  when  by  chance 
we  light  upon  some  twisted  root-trunk,  to 
which  the  shadows  have  given  outstretched 
arms.  The  vague  feelings,  too,  so  absolutely 
unaccountable,  that  the  sight  of  a  lonely  gate, 
or  weir,  or  park-railing,  or  sign-post,  or 
ruined  shed,  or  tumble-down  sheep-fold,  may 
suddenly  arouse,  when  we  feel  that  in  some 
weird  manner  we  are  the  accomplices  of  the 
Thing's  tragedy,  are  feelings  that  Dickens 
alone  among  writers  seems  to  understand.  A 
road  with  no  people  upon  it,  and  the  wind 
alone  sobbing  there;  with  blind  eyes  and 
wrinkled  forehead;  a  pool  by  the  edge  of  a 
wide  marsh-land — like  the  marsh-land  in 
"Great  Expectations" — with  I  know  not  what 
reflected  in  it,  and  waiting,  always  waiting,  for 
something  that  does  not  come;  a  low,  bent, 
knotted  pine-tree,  over  which  the  ravens  fly, 
one  by  one,  shrieking ;  these  are  the  things  that 

9  129 


VISIOxNS  AND  REVISIONS 

to  some  people — to  children,  for  instance — re- 
main in  the  mind  when  all  else  of  their  country 
journey  is  forgotten. 

There  is  no  one  but  Dickens  who  has  a 
style  that  can  drag  these  things  into  light. 
His  style  shrieks  sometimes  like  a  ghoul  tug- 
ging at  the  roots  of  a  mandrake.  At  other 
times  it  wails  like  a  lost  soul.  At  other  times 
it  mutters,  and  whimpers,  and  pipes  in  its 
throat,  like  an  old  man  blinking  at  the  moon. 
At  other  times  it  roars  and  thunders  like  ten 
thousand  drunken  devils.  At  other  times  it 
breaks  into  wistful,  tender,  little-girl  sobs — 
and  catches  the  rhythm  of  poetry — as  in  the 
death  of  Nell.  Sometimes  a  character  in 
Dickens  will  say  something  so  humorously 
pregnant,  so  directly  from  what  we  hear  in 
street  and  tavern,  that  art  itself  "gives  up," 
and  applauds,  speechless. 

After  all,  it  is  meet  and  right  that  there 
should  be  one  great  author,  undistracted  by 
psychology — unseduced  by  eroticism.  There 
remain  a  few  quite  important  things  to  deal 
with,  when  these  are  removed!  Birth,  for  in- 
stance— the  mystery  of  birth — and  the  mys- 
tery of  death.  One  never  forgets  death  in 
reading  Dickens.  He  has  a  thought,  a  pity, 
for  those  things  that  once  were  men  and 
women,  lying,  w4th  their  six  feet  of  earth  upon 
them,  in  our  English  Churchyards,  so  hor- 
ribly  still,   while   the   mask   of   their    sorrow 

130 


DICKENS 

yields  to  the  yet  more  terrible  grin  of  our  mor- 
tality's last  jest. 

And  to  the  last  he  is — like  all  children — the 
lover  of  Players.  Every  poor  dog  of  Public 
Entertainer,  from  the  Barrel-Organ  man  to 
him  who  pulls  the  ropes  for  Punch  and  Judy, 
has  his  unqualified  devotion.  The  modern 
Stage  may  see  strange  revolutions,  some  of 
them  by  no  means  suitable  to  children — but 
we  need  not  be  alarmed.  There  will  always  re- 
main the  larger  Stage,  the  stage  of  man's  own 
Exits  and  Entrances;  and  there,  at  any  rate, 
while  Dickens  is  their  "Manager,"  Pierrot 
may  weep  and  dance,  and  Pierrette  dance  and 
weep,  knowing  that  they  will  not  be  long  with- 
out their  audience,  or  long  without  their  ap- 
plause ! 

He  was  a  vulgar  writer.  Why  not?  Eng- 
land would  not  be  England — and  what  would 
London  be? — if  we  didn't  have  a  touch,  a 
smack,  a  sprinkling  of  that  ingredient! 

He  was  a  shameless  sentimentalist.  Why 
not?  It  is  better  to  cry  than  to  comb  one's 
hair  all  day  with  an  ivory  comb. 

He  was  a  monstrous  melodramatist.  Why 
not?  To  be  born  is  a  melodrama.  To  play 
"hide-and-seek"  with  Death  is  a  melodrama. 
And  some  have  found  melodramatic  satisfac- 
tion in  letting  themselves  be  caught.  All  the 
World's  a  Puppet-Show,  and  if  the  Big  Show- 
man jerks  his  wires  so  extravagantly,  why 
should  not  the  Little  Showman  do  the  same? 


131 


GOETHE 


GOETHE 

AS  the  enigmatic  wisdom  of  Goethe 
been  exhausted — after  these  years 
— and  after  the  sudden  transits 
across  our  sky  of  more  flashing  me- 
teors? Ah!  I  deem  not  yet.  Still  he  holds  the 
entrance  to  the  mysterious  Gate,  over  the  por- 
tals of  which  is  written,  not  "Lasciate  ogni 
speranza !"  but  "Think  of  Living!"  A  thunder- 
rifted  heart  he  bears,  but  victory,  not  defeat, 
looks  forth  from  his  wide,  outward-gazing 
eyes!  One  hand  holds  the  Skull,  engraved 
with  all  the  secret  symbols  of  man's  ascent  out 
of  the  bosom  of  Nature;  engraved,  yes! — by 
all  the  cunningest  tools  of  Science  and  her  un- 
wearied research;  but  the  other,  raised  aloft, 
noble  and  welcoming,  carries  the  laurel  crown 
of  the  triumph  of  Imagination! 

So,  between  Truth  and  Poetry — "im  ganzen 
guten,  schonen," — stands  our  Lord  of  Life ! 

Exhausted,  the  wisdom  of  Goethe?  Ah,  no! 
— hardly  fathomed  yet,  in  its  uppermost  levels ! 

If  it  were  really  possible  to  put  into  words 
the  whole  complex  world  of  impressions  and 
visions,  of  secrets  and  methods,   which  that 


135 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

name  suggests,  one  would  be  a  wiser  disciple 
than  Eckermann.  Fragment  by  fragment, 
morsel  by  morsel,  the  great  Figure  limns  itself 
against  the  shadow  of  the  years. 

Is  it  too  presumptuous  a  task  to  seek  to 
evoke — taking  first  one  impression  of  him  and 
then  another,  first  one  reaction  and  then  an- 
other— what  this  mysterious  Name  has  come 
to  mean  for  us?  One  hears  the  word  "cos- 
mic" whispered.  It  is  whispered  too  often  in 
these  days.  But  "cosmic,"  with  its  Whitman- 
esque,  modern  connotation,  does  not  exactly  fit 
Goethe.  Goethe  did  not  often  abandon  himself 
in  Dionysian  fury  to  the  ultimate  Elements. 
When  he  did — in  his  earlier  youth — before  the 
hardening  process  of  his  Italian  Journey  had 
sealed  his  protection  from  such  romantic  lapses 
— it  was  not  quite  in  the  strained,  desperate, 
modern  manner.  One  feels  certain,  thinking 
of  what  he  was,  at  Frankfurt,  at  Leipsig,  at 
Strassburg,  at  Weimar,  that  he  always  kept  a 
clear,  cool,  Apollonian  head,  mad  and  amorous 
though  his  escapades  may  seem ! 

I  do  not  fancy  that  ever  once  did  Goethe 
really  "give  himself  away,"  or  lose  the  four- 
square solidity  of  his  balance  in  any  wild  stag- 
gering to  left  or  right.  No ;  the  Goethean  tem- 
per, the  Goethean  attitude,  cannot  be  described 
as  "cosmic,"  while  that  word  implies  a  certain 
complete  yielding  to  a  vague  earth-worship. 
There  was  nothing  vague  about  Goethe's  in- 

136 


GOETHE 

tiinacy,  if  I  may  put  it  so,  with  the  Earth.  He 
and  It  seemed  destined  to  understand  one  an- 
other most  serenely,  in  a  shrewd  and  deHberate 
conspiracy ! 

The  Goethean  attitude  to  the  Universe  is 
too  self-poised  and  self-centered  to  be  ade- 
quately rendered  by  any  word  that  suggests 
complete  abandonment.  It  is  too — what  shall 
I  say? — too  sly  and  demonic — too  much  inside 
the  little  secrets  of  the  great  Mother — to  be 
summed  up  in  a  word  that  suggests  a  sort  of 
Titanic  whirlwind  of  embraces.  And  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  as  easy  to  exagger- 
ate the  Olympian  aspect  of  Goethe.  When  this 
is  carried  too  far,  something  in  him,  something 
extraordinarily  characteristic,  evaporates,  like 
a  thin  stream  of  Parnassian  smoke. 

How  shall  I  express  what  this  is?  Perhaps 
it  is  the  German  in  him.  For,  in  spite  of  all 
Nietzsche's  Mediterraneanizing  of  this  Super- 
man, Goethe  was  profoundly  and  inveterately 
German.  The  Rhine-Maidens  rocked  him  in 
his  cradle  and,  though  he  might  journey  to 
Rome  or  Troy  or  Carthage,  it  was  to  the  Rhine- 
Maidens  that  he  returned.  Yes,  I  do  not  think 
that  those  understand  him  best  who  keep  bow- 
ing to  the  ground  and  muttering  "Olympian" ! 

Am  I  carrying  this  particular  taper-light  of 
discrimination  too  far  when  I  sav  that  there 
is,  to  the  Celtic  mind  at  least,  something  hu- 
morously naive  and  childlike  in  Goethe,  mixed 

137 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

in,  queerly  enough,  with  all  his  rich,  mellow, 
and  even  worldly,  wisdom?  One  overtakes 
him,  now  and  then,  and  catches  him,  as  it  were, 
off  his  guard,  in  little  pathetic  lapses  into  a 
curious  simplicity — a  simplicity  grave-eyed, 
potentious  and  solemn — almost  like  that  of 
some  great  Infant-Faun,  trying  very  seriously 
to  learn  the  difficult  syllables  of  our  human 
"Categorical  Imperative" !  World-child,  as  he 
was,  the  magic  of  the  universe  pouring  through 
him,  one  sometimes  feels  a  strange,  dim  hope 
with  regard  to  that  dubious  general  Issue, 
when  we  find  him  so  confident  about  the  pres- 
ence of  the  mysterious  Being  he  worshipped; 
and  so  transparently  certain  of  his  personal 
survival  after  Death! 

There  is  no  one,  except  Leonardo  Da  Vinci, 
in  the  whole  history  of  our  Planet,  who  gives 
us  quite  that  sense  of  a  person  possessed  of 
some  secret  illumination  not  granted  to  the 
rest  of  the  world.  There  is  much  reassurance 
in  this.  More  than  has  been,  perhaps,  real- 
ized. For  it  is  probable  that  "in  his  caves  of 
ice,"  Leonardo  also  felt  himself  indestructible 
by  the  Arch-Enemy.  One  thinks  of  those  Cab- 
balistic words  of  old  Glanville,  "Man  does  not 
yield  himself  to  Death — save  by  the  weakness 
of  his  mortal  W^ill." 

Goethe  collecting  fossils  and  crystals  and 
specimens  of  rock-strata ;  Goethe  visiting  Bo- 
tanical Gardens  and  pondering  on  the  Meta- 

138 


GOETHE 

morphosis  of  Plants;  Goethe  climbing-  Strass- 
burg  Cathedral-Spire;  Goethe  meeting  the 
Phantom  of  Himself  as  he  returned  from  the 
arms  of  Frederika;  Goethe  "experiencing  the 
sensation"  of  crossing  the  "Firing-Line"; 
Goethe  "announcing"  to  Eckermann  that  that 
worthy  man  had  better  avoid  undertaking  an)- 
"great"  literary  work;  Goethe  sending  Fran 
von  Stein  sausages  from  his  breakfast-table; 
Goethe  consoling  himself  in  the  Storm  by  ob- 
serving his  birth-star  Lucifer,  and  thinking  of 
the  Lake  of  Galilee,  are  pictures  of  noble  and 
humorotis  memory  which  reconcile  one  to  the 
Comedy  of  Living ! 

How  vividly  returns  to  me — your  pardon, 
reader! — the  first  time  I  read  "The  Sorrows 
of  Werter"  in  that  little  "Three-penny"  edition 
published  by  Messrs.  Cassell!  It  was  in  a 
Barge,  towed  by  three  Horses,  on  the  River, 
between  Langport  and  Bridgewater,  in  the 
County  of  Somerset !  The  majority  of  the  com- 
pany were  as  rowdy  a  set  of  good-humored 
Bean-Feasters  as  ever  drank  thin  beer  in  a 
ramshackle  tavern.  But  there  was  one  of  them 
— this  is  twenty-five  years  ago,  reader ! — a  girl 
as  fragile  as  a  peeled  Willow-wand — and 
teased  by  the  rude  badinage  of  our  companipns 
we  sheltered — as  the  friendly  mists  rose — un- 
der a  great  Tarpaulin  at  the  barge's  stern. 
Where  is  that  girl  now,  T  wonder?  Ls  she 
alive?    Will  she  ever  blush  with  ano-er  at  be- 


139 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ing  thus  gently  lifted  up,  from  beneath  the 
kind  Somersetshire  mists,  into  an  hour's  pub- 
licity? Who  can  tell?  We  are  all  passing  one 
another,  in  mist-darkened  barges,  swift  or  slow. 
She  is  a  wraith,  a  shadow,  a  receding  phan- 
tom ;  but  I  wave  my  hand  to  her  over  the  years ! 
I  shall  always  associate  her  with  Lotte;  and  I 
never  smell  the  peculiar  smell  of  Tarpaulin 
without  thinking  of  "the  Sorrows  of  Werter." 

"Werter"  has  certainly  the  very  droop  and 
bewilderment  of  youth's  first  passion.  It  is 
good  to  plunge  one's  hands,  when  one  has 
grown  cynical  and  old,  into  that  innocent,  if 
somewhat  turbid,  fountain.  When  we  pass  to 
"Wilhelm  Meister,"  we  are  in  quite  a  different 
world.  The  earlier  part  of  this  book  has  the 
very  stamp  of  the  Goethean  "truth  and  poetry." 
One  can  read  it  side  by  side  with  the  great 
"Autobiography"  and  find  the  shrewd  insight 
and  oracular  wisdom  quite  equally  convincing 
in  the  invention  and  the  reality.  What  an  un- 
mistakable and  unique  character  all  these  imag- 
inary persons  of  Goethe's  stories  have !  They 
are  so  different  from  any  other  persons  in  fic- 
tion! Wherein  does  the  difference  lie?  It  is 
hard  to  say.  In  a  sense,  they  are  more  life-like 
and  real.  In  another  sense,  they  are  more  fan- 
tastic. Sometimes  they  seem  mere  dolls — like 
the  figures  in  his  own  puppet-show — and  we 
can  literally  "see  the  puppets  dallying." 

Jarno  is  a  queer  companion  for  a  man  to 

140 


GOETHE 

have.  And  what  of  the  lady  who,  when  she 
was  asked  whether  she  had  ever  loved,  an- 
swered, ''never  or  always"?  Phillina  is  a  very 
loving  and  an  extremely  vivacious  wench. 
Goethe's  sublime  unconsciousness  of  ordinary 
moral  qualms  is  never  better  observed  than  in 
the  story  of  this  extravagant  young  minx. 
Then,  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  the  arresting,  am- 
biguous little  figure  of  poor  Mignon !  What 
does  she  do — a  child  of  pure  lyrical  poetry — a 
thing  out  of  the  old  ballads — in  this  queer, 
grave,  indecent  company?  That  elaborate  de- 
scription of  Mignon's  funeral  so  carefully  ar- 
ranged by  the  Aesthetic  "Uncle,"  has  it  not  all 
the  curious  qualities  of  the  Goethean  vein — its 
clairvoyant  insight  into  the  under-truth  of  Na- 
ture— its  cold-blooded  pre-occupation  with 
"Art" — its  gentle  irony — its  mania  for  exact 
detail?  The  "gentle  irony"  of  which  I  speak 
has  its  opportunity  in  the  account  of  the  "Beau- 
tiful Soul"  or  "Fair  Saint."  It  reads,  in  places, 
like  the  tender  dissection  of  a  lovely  corpse  by 
a  genial,  elderly  Doctor. 

But  the  passage  which,  for  me,  is  most  pre- 
cious is  that  Apprentice's  "Indenture."  I  sup- 
pose in  no  other  single  paragraph  of  human 
prose  is  there  so  much  concentrated  wisdom. 
"To  act  is  easy — to  think  is  hard!"  How  ex- 
traordinarily true  that  is!  But  it  is  not  the 
precise  tune  of  the  strenuous  preachers  of  our 
time !    The  whole  idea  of  the  "Pedagogic  Prov- 

141 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ince,"  ruled  over  by  that  admirable  Abbe,  is 
so  exquisitely  in  Goethe's  most  wise  and  yet 
most  simple  manner!  The  passage  about  the 
"Three  Reverences"  and  the  "Creed"  is  as 
good  an  instance  of  thai  sublime  Spinozistic 
way  of  dealing  with  the  current  religion  as 
that  amazing  remark  he  made  once  to  Ecker- 
man  about  his  own  faith:  "When  I  want 
scientific  unity,  I  am  a  Pantheist,  When  I  de- 
sire poetical  multifariousness,  I  am  a  Poly- 
theist.  And  when  my  moral  nature  requires  a 
Personal  God — there  is  room  for  That  also!" 

When  one  comes  to  speak  of  Faust,  it  is 
necessary  for  us  to  remember  the  words  the 
great  man  himself  used  to  his  follower  in 
speaking  of  this  masterpiece.  Eckermann 
teased  him  for  interpretations.  "What,"  said 
he  to  Goethe,  "is  the  leading  Idea  in  the 
Poem?"  "Do  you  suppose,"  answered  the 
Sage,  "that  a  thing  into  which  I  have  put  the 
Life-Blood  of  all  my  days  is  able  to  be  sum- 
moned up  in  anything  so  narrow  and  limited 
as  an  Idea?" 

Personally,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  I 
think  Faust  is  the  most  permanently  interest- 
ing of  all  the  works  that  have  proceeded  from 
the  human  brain. 

Its  attitude  to  life  is  one  which  ultimately 
has  more  to  strengthen  and  sustain  and  put 
courage — if  not  the  Devil — into  us  than  any- 
thing I  know.    When  I  meet  a  man  who  shall 


142 


GOETHE 

tell  me  that  the  Philosophy  of  his  life  is  the 
Philosophy  of  Faust,  I  bow  down  humbly  be- 
fore him.  I  did  meet  such  a  man  once.  I  think 
he  was  a  Commercial  Traveller  from  Buffalo. 

How  wisely  Goethe  deals  in  Faust  with  the 
problem — if  it  be  a  problem — of  Evil !  His 
suggestion  seems  to  be  that  the  spirit  of  Evil 
in  the  world — "part  of  that  Nothing  out  of 
which  came  the  All" — plays  an  absolutely  es- 
sential role.  "By  means  of  it  God  fulfils  his 
most  cherished  purposes."  Had  Faust  not  se- 
duced poor  little  Gretchen,  he  would  never  have 
passed  as  far  as  he  did  along  the  road  of  Initia- 
tion, and  the  spirit  of  his  Victim — in  her  trans- 
lunar  Apotheosis — would  not  have  been  there 
to  lift  him  Heavenwards  at  the  last.  And  yet 
no  one  could  say  that  Goethe  disparages  the 
enormity  of  Faust's  crime.  That  ineffable  re- 
tort of  Mephistopheles,  when,  on  those  "black 
horses,"  they  are  whirled  through  the  night  to 
her  dungeon,  "She  is  not  the  first,"  has  the  es- 
sence of  all  pity  and  wrath  in  its  cruel  sting. 
Mephistopheles  himself  is  the  most  interesting 
of  all  Devils.  And  he  is  so  because,  although 
he  knows  perfectly  well — queer  Son  of  Chaos 
as  he  is — that  he  is  bound  to  be  defeated,  he 
3^et  goes  on  upon  his  evil  way,  and  continues  to 
resist  the  great  stream  of  Life  which,  accord- 
ing to  his  view,  had  better  never  have  broken 
loose  from  primeval  Nothingness. 

That  is  ultimatelv  Goethe's  contribution  to 


143 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

the  disputes  about  what  we  call  "God."  The 
name  does  not  matter.  "Feeling  is  all  in  all. 
The  name  is  sound  and  smoke."  "God,"  or 
"the  Good,"  is  to  Goethe  simply  the  eternal 
stream  of  life,  working  slowly  upwards,  on- 
wards, to  unknown  goals.  All  that  opposes 
itself  to  this  Life-stream  is  evil.  Morality,  a 
man-made  local  convention,  is  our  present 
blundering  method  of  assisting  this  great 
Force,  and  preventing  its  sterility,  or  dissipa- 
tion. In  his  conception  of  the  nature  of  this 
Life-stream  Goethe  is  more  Catholic  and  more 
subtle  than  Nietzsche. 

Self -realization?  Certainly!  That  is  an  as- 
pect of  it  which  was  not  likely  to  be  forgotten 
by  the  great  Egoist  whose  sole  object,  as  he 
confessed,  was  to  "build  up  the  Pyramid  of  his 
Existence"  from  the  broadest  possible  base. 
But  not  only  self-realization.  The  "dying  to 
live"  of  the  Christian,  as  well  as  "the  rising 
above  one's  body"  of  the  Platonist,  have  their 
part  there.  Ascetism  itself,  with  all  its  degrees 
of  passionate  or  philosophical  purity,  is  as 
much  an  evocation  of  the  world-spirit — of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  System  of  Things — as 
is  the  other. 

It  is,  of  course,  ultimately,  quite  a  mad  hope 
to  desire  to  convert  "the  Spirit  that  Denies." 
He,  too,  under  the  Lord,  is  an  accomplice  of 
the  Life-stream.  He  helps  it  forward,  even 
while  he  opposes  himself  to  it,  just  as  a  bul- 

144 


GOETHE 

wark  of  submerged  rocks  make  the  tide  leap 
landward  with  more  foaming  fury ! 

Goethe's  idea  of  the  "Eternal  Feminine" 
leading  us  "upward  and  on"  is  not  at  all  the 
sentimental  nonsense  which  Nietzsche  fancied 
it.  In  a  profound  sense  it  is  absolutely  true. 
Nor  need  the  more  anti-feminist  among  us  be 
troubled  by  such  a  Truth.  We  have  just  seen 
that  the  Devil  himself  is  a  means,  and  a  very 
essential  means,  for  leading  us  "upward  and 
on." 

Goethe  is  perfectly  right.  The  "love  of 
women,"  though  a  destructive  force,  and  a 
frightful  force  as  far  as  certain  kinds  of  "art" 
and  "philosophy"  are  concerned,  cannot  be 
looked  upon  as  anything  but  "a  provocation  to 
creation,"  when  the  whole  large  scheme  of  ex- 
istence is  taken  into  account. 

I  think  myself  that  it  is  easy  to  make  too 
much  of  Goethe's  Pantheism.  The  Being  he 
worshipped  was  simply  "Whatever  Mystery" 
lies  behind  the  ocean  of  Life.  And  if  no  "mys- 
tery" lies  behind  the  ocean  of  life, — very  well ! 
A  Goethean  disciple  is  able,  then,  to  worship 
Life,  with  no  mystery  behind  it!  It  is  rather 
the  custom  among  clever,  tiresome  people  to 
disparage  that  second  part  of  Faust,  with  its 
world-panoramic  procession  of  all  the  gods 
and  demi-gods  and  angels  and  demons  that 
have  ever  visited  this  earth.  I  do  not  disparage 
it.    I  have  never  found  it  dull.    Dull  would  he 

10  145 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

be,  as  "the  fat  weed  that  rots  itself  in  case  on 
Lethe's  wharf,"  who  found  nothing  curious 
and  provocative  about  these  Sirens  and  Cen- 
taurs and  Lemures  and  Larvae  and  Cabiri  and 
Phorkyads!  I  can  myself  endure  very  pleas- 
antly even  the  society  of  those  "Blessed  Boys" 
which  some  have  found  so  distressing.  As  for 
the  Devil,  in  the  end,  making  ''indecent  over- 
tures" to  the  little  Heavenly  Butterflies,  who 
pelt  him  with  roses — even  that  does  not  con- 
fuse my  mind  or  distract  my  senses.  It  is  the 
"other  side  of  the  Moon" — the  under-mask  of 
the  world-comed}^  and  the  incidental  "saving" 
of  Dr.  Faust  is  not  more  essential  in  the  great 
mad  game ! 

Read  Faust,  both  portions  of  it,  dear  reader, 
and  see  if  you  do  not  feel,  with  me,  that,  in  the 
last  resort,  one  leaves  this  rich,  strange  poem 
with  a  nobler  courage  to  endure  life,  and  a 
larger  view  of  its  amazing  possibilities! 

I  wonder  if  that  curious  novel  of  Goethe's 
called  the  "Elective  Affinities"  is  perused  as 
widely  as  it  deserves?  That  extraordinary 
company  of  people!  And  the  patient,  porten- 
tious  interest  Goethe  compels  us  to  take  in  the 
laying  out  of  gardens  and  the  beautifying  of 
church-yards!  "The  Captain,"  "the  Archi- 
tect"— not  to  speak  of  the  two  bewildering 
women — do  they  not  suggest  fantastic  figures 
out  of  one's  memories  of  remotest  childhood? 
I  suppose  to  a  world-child  like  Goethe,  watch- 

146 


GOETHE 

ing,  with  grave  super-human  interest,  all  our 
little  pre-occupations,  we  have  all  of  us  some- 
thing of  the  sweet  pedantry  of  these  people — 
we  are  all  of  us  "Captains"  and  "Architects" 
with  some  odd  twist  in  our  quiet  heads. 

The  solemn  immorality,  amounting  to  out- 
rageous indecency,  of  those  scenes  between  the 
assorted  lovers  when  they  make  "double"  love, 
and  behind  the  mask  of  their  legitimate  attach- 
ments follow  their  "elective  affinities,"  is  a 
thing  that  may  well  stagger  the  puritan  reader. 
The  puritan  reader  will,  indeed,  like  old  Car- 
lyle,  be  tempted  more  than  once  to  fling  these 
grave,  unblushing  chronicles,  with  their  deep, 
oracular  wisdom  and  their  shameless  details, 
into  the  dust-heap.  But  it  were  wiser  to  re- 
frain. After  all,  one  cannot  conceal  from  one's 
self  that  things  are  like  that — and  if  the  hy- 
aena's howl,  from  the  filthy  marshes  of  earth's 
weird  edge  and  the  thick  saliva  on  his  oozing 
jaws,  nauseates  our  preciosity,  and  besmirches 
our  self-esteem,  we  must  remember  that  this  is 
the  way  the  Lord  of  "the  Prologue  in  Heaven" 
has  willed  that  the  scavengers  of  life's  cess- 
pools go  about  their  work ! 

Probably  it  will  not  be  the  "indecency"  of 
certain  things  in  Goethe  that  will  most  ofYend 
our  modern  taste ;  it  will  be  that  curious,  grave 
pre-occupation  of  his,  so  objective  and  stifif, 
with  artistic  details,  and  architectural  details, 
and  theatrical  details ! 


147 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

One  must  remember  his  noble  saying,  "Earn- 
estness alone  makes  life  Eternity,"  and  that 
other  "saying"  about  Art  having,  as  its  main 
purpose,  the  turning  of  the  "Transitory"  into 
the  "Permanent" !  If  the  Transitory  is  really 
to  be  turned  into  the  Permanent,  we  must  take 
ourselves  and  our  work  very  seriously  indeed ! 

And  such  "seriousness,"  such  high,  patient, 
unwearied  seriousness,  is,  after  all,  Goethe's 
bequest  to  our  flippant  and  fanciful  generation. 
He  knows  well  enough  our  deepest  doubt,  our 
most  harrowing  scepticism.  He  has  long  ago 
"been  through  all  that."  But  he  has  "re- 
turned"— not  exactly  like  Nietzsche,  with  a 
fierce,  scornful,  dramatic  cry,  to  a  contemptu- 
ous "superficiality" — he  has  returned  to  the  ac- 
tual possibilities  that  the  world  offers,  "super- 
ficial" and  otherwise,  of  turning  the  whole 
strange  business  into  a  solid,  four-square 
"work  of  art."  We  must  reject  "evil,"  quietly 
and  ironically;  not  because  it  is  condemned  by 
human  morality,  but  because  "we  have  our 
work  to  do" !  We  must  live  in  "the  good"  and 
"the  true,"  not  because  it  is  our  "duty"  so  to 
do,  but  because  only  along  this  particular  line 
does  the  "energy  without  agitation"  of  the 
"abysmal  mothers"  communicate  itself  to  our 
labour. 

And  so  we  come  back,  like  the  grief-stricken 
children  over  Mignon's  grave,  to  Life  and 
Life's  toil.    There  only,  in  the  inflexible  devel- 

148 


GOETHE 

opment  of  what  taste,  of  what  discernment,  of 
what  power,  of  what  method,  of  what  demonic 
genius,  we  may  have  been  granted  by  the  gods, 
hes  "the  cosmic  secret."  That  is  all  we  have  in 
our  human  hands,  that  malleable  stuff  out  of 
which  Fate  made  us — and  only  in  the  shrewd, 
unwearied  use  of  that  shall  we  prove  our  love 
to  the  Being  "who  cannot  love  us  in  return," 
and  make  our  illusion  of  Free-Will  part  of  his 
universal  Purpose! 


149 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


T  is  easy  to  miss  the  especial 
grandeur  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
work.  The  airy  persiflage  of  his 
prose — its  reiterated  lucidities — 
pleasing  to  some,  irritating  to  others,  will  have 
a  place,  but  not  a  very  important  place,  in 
English  Literature.  Even  those  magical  and 
penetrating  ''aphorisms"  with  which  he  has 
held  the  door  open  to  so  many  religious  and 
moral  vistas  tease  us  a  little  now,  and — sug- 
gestive enough  in  their  hour — do  not  deepen 
and  deepen  upon  the  intellect  with  the  weight 
of  "aphorisms"  from  Epictetus  or  Goethe. 

The  ''stream  of  tendency  that  makes  for 
righteousness"  runs  a  little  shallow,  and  it  has 
so  many  pebbles  under  its  clear  wave!  That 
word  of  his,  "the  Secret  of  Jesus,"  wears  best 
of  all.  It  was  a  happy  thought  to  use  the  word 
"secret" — a  thought  upon  which  those  whose 
religious  creed  binds  them  to  "the  method" 
rather  than  "the  secret,"  may  well  ponder! 

As  a  critic,  too,  though  illuminating  and  re- 
assuring, he  is  far  from  clairvoyant.  A  quaint 
vein  of  pure,  good-tempered,  ethical  Philistin- 

153 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ism  prevents  his  really  entering  the  evasive 
souls  of  Shelley  or  Keats  or  Heine.  With 
Wordsworth  or  Byron  he  is  more  at  home. 
But  he  misses  many  subtleties,  even  in  their 
simple  temperaments.  He  is  no  Proteus,  no 
Wizard  of  critical  metempsychosis.  For  all 
his  airy  wit,  he  is  "a  plain,  blunt  man,  who 
loves  his  friend."  In  fact,  when  one  compares 
him,  as  a  sheer  illuminator  of  psychological 
twilights,  to  Walter  Pater,  one  realizes  at  once 
how  easily  a  quite  great  man  may  ^'render 
himself  stupid"  by  sprinkling  himself  with  the 
holy  water  of  Fixed  Principles ! 

No,  it  is  neither  of  Arnold,  the  Theological 
Free-Lance,  or  of  Arnold,  the  Critic  of  Litera- 
ture, that  I  want  to  speak,  but  of  Arnold,  the 
Poet. 

Personally  I  hold  the  opinion  that  he  was  a 
greater  poet  than  either  Tennyson  or  Brown- 
ing. His  philosophy  is  a  far  nobler,  truer,  and 
more  permanent  thing  than  theirs,  and  there 
are  passages  and  single  lines  in  his  poetry 
which  over-top,  by  enormous  distances,  any- 
thing that  they  achieved. 

You  ask  me  what  the  Philosophy  of  Mat- 
thew Arnold  was?  It  is  easy  to  answer  that. 
It  was  the  philosophy  of  all  the  very  greatest 
among  mortal  men!  In  his  poetry  he  passes 
completely  out  of  the  region  of  Theological 
argument,  and  his  attitude  to  life  is  the  atti- 
tude of  Sophocles  and  Virgil  and  Montaigne 

154 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

and  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare  and  Goethe. 
Those  who  read  Matthew  Arnold,  and  love 
him,  know  that  his  intellectual  tone  is  the  tone 
of  those  great  classical  writers,  and  his  con- 
clusions their  conclusions. 

He  never  mocks  our  pain  with  foolish,  un- 
founded hopes  and  he  never  permits  mad  de- 
spair to  paralyse  him.  He  takes  life  as  it  is, 
and,  as  we  all  have  to  do,  makes  the  best  of 
its  confusions.  If  we  are  here  "as  on  a  dark- 
ling plain,  swept  by  confused  alarms  of  strug- 
gle and  flight,  where  ignorant  armies  clash  by 
night,"  we  can  at  least  be  "true  to  one  an- 
other." 

One  wonders  sometimes  if  it  be  properly  un- 
derstood by  energetic  teachers  of  youth  that 
there  is  only  one  intellectual  attitude  towards 
life,  only  one  philosophy,  only  one  ultimate 
mood.  This  is  that  mood  of  "resignation," 
which,  from  Homer  to  Matthew  Arnold,  is 
alone  adapted,  in  the  long  run,  to  the  taste  of 
our  days  upon  earth. 

The  real  elements  of  our  situation  have  not 
altered  in  the  remotest  degree  since  Achilles 
dragged  Hector  round  the  w^alls  of  Troy. 

Men  and  women  still  love  and  hate;  still  "en- 
joy the  sun"  and  "live  light  in  the  Spring"; 
still  "advance  true  friends  and  beat  back  dan- 
gerous foes" — and  upon  them  the  same  Con- 
stellations look  down ;  and  upon  them  the  same 
winds  blow;  and  upon  them  the  same  Sphinx 

155 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

glides  through  the  obscurity,  with  the  same  in- 
soluble Question. 

Nothing  has  really  changed.  The  "river  of 
time"  may  pass  through  various  landscapes, 
but  it  is  the  same  river,  and,  at  the  last,  it 
brings  to  us,  as  "the  banks  fade  dimmer  away" 
and  "the  stars  come  out,"  "murmurs  and 
scents"  of  the  same  infinite  Sea.  Yes,  there  is 
only  one  Philosophy,  as  Disraeli  said,  jesting; 
and  Matthew  Arnold,  among  the  moderns,  is 
the  one  who  has  been  allowed  to  put  it  into  his 
poetry.  For  though,  before  the  "Flamantia 
Moenia"  of  the  world's  triple  brass,  we  are 
fain  to  bow  our  heads  inconsolably,  there  come 
those  moments  when,  a  hand  laid  in  ours,  we 
think  we  know  "the  hills  whence  our  life 
flows" ! 

The  flowing  of  the  river  of  life — the  wash- 
ing of  the  waves  of  life — how  well  one  recalls, 
from  Arnold's  broken  and  not  always  musical 
stanzas,  references  to  that  sound — to  the  sound 
so  like  the  sound  of  those  real  sea-tides  that 
"Sophocles,  long  ago,  heard  in  the  Aegaean," 
and  listened,  thinking  of  many  things,  as  we 
listen  and  think  of  many  things  today ! 
"For  we  are  all  like  swimmers  in  the  Sea, 
"Poised  on  the  top  of  a  huge  wave  of  Fate, 
"And  whether  it  will  lift  us  to  the  land 
"Or  whether  it  will  bear  us  out  to  Sea, 
"Back  out  to  Sea,  to  the  dark  gulfs  of  Death, 
"We  know  not — 


156 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

"Only  the  event  will  teach  us,  in  its  hour." 
I   sometimes   think   that  a   certain  wonderful 
blending  of  realism   and  magic   in  Matthew 
Arnold's  poetry  has  received  but  scant  justice. 

In  ''the  Forsaken  Merman,"  for  instance, 
there  are  many  stanzas  that  make  you  smell 
the  salt-foam  and  imagine  all  that  lies,  hidden 
and  strange,  down  there  upon  the  glittering 
sand.    That  line, 

"Where  great  whales  go  sailing  by 
Round  the  world  for  ever  and  aye," 
has  a  liberating  power  that  may  often  recur, 
when  one  is,  God  knows,  far  enough  from  the 
spouting  of  any  whale!  And  the  whole  poem 
has  a  wistful,  haunting  beauty  that  never 
grows  tedious. 

Matthew  Arnold  is  a  true  classical  poet.  It 
is  strictly  in  accordance  with  the  authentic  tra- 
dition to  introduce  those  touches  of  light, 
quaint,  playful,  airy  realism  into  the  most  sol- 
emn poetry.  It  is  what  Virgil,  Catullus,  The- 
ocritus, Milton,  Landor,  all  did.  Some  persons 
grow  angry  with  him  for  a  certain  tone  of  half- 
gay,  half-sad,  allusive  tenderness,  when  he 
speaks  of  Oxford  and  the  country  round  Ox- 
ford. I  do  not  think  there  is  anything  un- 
pleasing  in  this.  So  did  Catullus  talk  of  Sir- 
mio;  Horace  of  his  Farm;  Milton  of  "Deva's 
wizard-stream";  Landor  of  Sorrento  and 
Amalfi. 

It  is  all  of  a  piece  with  the  "resignation"  of 

157 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

a  philosophy  which  does  not  expect  that  this  or 
that  change  of  dwelling  will  ease  our  pain ;  of 
a  philosophy  that  naturally  loves  to  linger  over 
familiar  well-sides  and  roadways  and  meadow- 
paths  and  hillsides,  over  the  places  where  we 
went  together,  when  we  "still  had  Thyrsis." 

The  direct  Nature-poetry  of  Matthew  Arn- 
old, touching  us  with  the  true  classic  touch, 
and  yet  with  something,  I  know  not  what,  of 
more  wistful  tenderness  added,  is  a  great  re- 
freshment after  the  pseudo-magic,  so  vague 
and  unsatisfying,  of  so  much  modern  verse. 
'*It  matters  not.  Light-cormer  he  has  flown ! 
But  we  shall  have  him  in  the  sweet  spring 

days. 
With  whitening  hedges  and  uncrumpling 

fern, 
And    blue-bells    trembling    by    the    forest 

ways. 
And  scent  of  hay  new-mown — " 
Or  that  description  of  the  later  season: 

"Too  quick  despairer !    Wherefore  W'ilt  thou 
go? 
Soon    will    the    high    Midsummer    pomps 

come  on, 
Soon    shall    we    have    gold-dusted    Snap- 
dragon, 
Sweet-William   with   his   homely   cottage- 
smell. 
And  Stocks,  in  fragrant  blow. 
Roses  that  down  the  allevs  shine  afar. 


158 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

And  open  Jasniin-niullled  lattices, 
And  groups  under  the  dreaming  garden- 
trees, 
And  the  pale  Moon  and  the  white  Evening- 
Star." 
True  to  the  "only  philosophy,"  Matthew  Arn- 
old is  content  to  indicate  how  for  each  one  of 
us  the  real  drama  of  life  goes  on  with  a  cer- 
tain quite  natural,  quite  homely,   quite  quiet 
background  of  the  strip  of  earth  where  we  first 
loved  and  dreamed,  and  were  happy,  and  were 
sad,  and  knew  loss  and  regret,  and  the  limits  of 
man's  power  to  change  his  fate. 

There  is  a  large  and  noble  calm  about  the 
poetry  of  this  writer  which  has  the  effect  upon 
one  of  the  falling  of  cool  water  into  a  dark, 
fern-fringed  cave.  He  strips  away  lightly,  del- 
icately, gently,  all  the  trappings  of  our  fever- 
ish worldliness,  our  vanity  and  ambition,  and 
lifts  open,  at  one  touch,  the  great  moon-bathed 
windows  that  look  out  upon  the  line  of  white 
foam — and  the  patient  sands. 

And  never  is  this  calm  deeper  than  when  he 
refers  to  Death.  "For  there,"  he  says,  speak- 
ing of  that  Cemetery  at  Firenze  where  his 
Thyrsis  lies ; 

"For  there  thine  earth-forgetting  eyelids  keep 
"The  morningless  and  unawakening  sleep, 
"Under  the  flowery  Oleanders  pale — " 
Sometimes,  as  in  his  "Tristram  and  Iseult," 
he  is  permitted  little  touches  of  a  startling  and 

159 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

penetrating  beauty ;  such  as,  returning  to  one's 
memory  and  lips,  in  very  dusty  and  arid  places, 
bring  all  the  tears  of  half-forgotten  romance 
back  again  to  us  and  restore  to  us  the  despair 
that  is  dearer  than  hope ! 

Those  lines,  for  instance,  when  Tristram, 
dying  in  his  fire-lit,  tapestried  room,  tended  by 
the  pale  Iseult  of  Brittany,  knows  that  his 
death-longing  is  fulfilled,  and  that  she,  his 
*'other"  Iseult,  has  come  to  him  at  last — have 
they  not  the  very  echo  in  them  of  what  such 
weariness  feels  when,  only  not  too  late,  the 
impossible  happens?  Little  he  cares  for  the 
rain  beating  on  the  roof,  or  the  moan  of  the 
wind  in  the  chimney,  or  the  shadows  on  that 
tapestried  wall!  He  listens — his  heart  almost 
stops. 

"What  voices  are  those  in  the  still  night  air? 
What  lights  in  the  court?    What  steps  on  the 

stair?" 
One  wonders  if  the  reader,  too,  knows  and 
loves,  that  strange  fragmentary  unrhymed 
poem,  called  "the  Strayed  Reveller,"  with  its 
vision  of  Circe  and  the  sleeping  boy-faun,  and 
the  wave-tossed  Wanderer,  and  its  background 
of  "fitful  earth-murmurs"  and  "dreaming 
woods" — Strangely  down,  upon  the  weary 
child,  smiles  the  great  enchantress,  seeing  the 
wine  stains  on  his  white  skin,  and  the  berries 
in  his  hair.  The  thing  is  slight  enough;  but 
in  its  coolness,  and  calmness,  and  sad  delicate 

160 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

beauty,  it  makes  one  pause  and  grow  silent, 
as  in  the  long  hushed  galleries  of  the  Vatican 
one  pauses  and  grows  silent  before  some  little 
known,  scarcely-catalogued  Greek  Vase.  The 
spirit  of  life  and  youth  is  there — immortal  and 
tender — yet  there  too  is  the  shadow  of  that 
pitiful  "in  vain,"  with  which  the  brevity  of 
such  beauty,  arrested  only  in  chilly  marble, 
mocks  us  as  we  pass ! 

It  is  life — but  life  at  a  distance — Life  refined, 
winnowed,  sifted,  purged.  *'Yet,  O  Prince, 
what  labour!  O  Prince,  what  pain!"  The 
world  is  perhaps  tired  of  hearing  from  the 
mouths  of  its  great  lonely  exiles  the  warning 
to  youth  "to  work  unto  its  own  soul,"  and  let 
the  mad  throngs  clamour  by,  with  their  beck- 
oning idols,  and  treacherous  pleading.  But 
never  has  this  unregarded  hand  been  laid  so 
gently  upon  us  as  in  the  poem  called  "Self- 
Dependence." 

Heaven   forgive   us — we   cannot   follow   its 
high  teaching — and  yet  we  too,  we  all,  have  felt 
that  sort  of  thing,  when  standing  at  the  prow 
of  a  great  ship  we  have  watched  the  reflection 
of  the  stars  in  the  fast-divided  water. 
"Unaffrightened  by  the  silence  round  them 
"Undistracted  by  the  sights  they  see 
"These  demand  not  that  the  world  about  them 
"Yield  them  love,  amusement,  sympathy. 
"But  with  joy  the  stars  perform  their  shining 
''And  the  sea  its  long,  moon-silvered  roll ; 

11  161 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

**For  self-poised  they  live;  nor  pine  with  noting 
"All  the  fever  of  some  differing  soul." 
The  "one  philosophy"  is,  as  Matthev^  Arnold 
himself  puts  it,  "utrumque  paratus,"  prepared 
for  either  event.  Yet  it  leans,  and  how  should 
it  not  lean,  in  a  world  like  this,  to  the  sadder 
and  the  more  final.  That  vision  of  a  godless 
universe,  "rocking  its  obscure  body  to  and  fro," 
in  ghastly  space,  is  a  vision  that  refuses  to  pass 
away.  "To  the  children  of  chance,"  as  my 
Catholic  philosopher  says,  "chance  would  seem 
intelligible." 

But  even  if  it  be — if  the  whole  confluent 
ocean  of  its  experiences  be — unintelligible  and 
without  meaning;  it  remains  that  mortal  men 
must  endure  it,  and  comfort  themselves  with 
their  "little  pleasures."  The  immoral  cruelty 
of  Fate  has  been  well  expressed  by  Matthew 
Arnold  in  that  poem  called  "Mycerinus," 
where  the  virtuous  king  does  not  receive  his 
reward.  He,  for  his  part  will  revel  and  care 
not.  There  may  be  nobler,  there  may  be  hap- 
pier, ways  of  awaiting  the  end — but  whether 
"revelling"  or  "refraining,"  we  are  all  waiting 
the  end.  Waiting  and  listening,  half-bitterly, 
half-eagerly,  seems  the  lot  of  man  upon  earth ! 
And  meanwhile  that 

"Power,  too  great  and  strong 

"Even  for  the  gods  to  conquer  or  beguile, 
"Sweeps  earth  and  heaven  and  men  and  gods 

along 

162 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

"Like  the  broad  volume  of  the  insurgent  Nile 
"And  the  great  powers  we  serve,  themselves 

must  be 
"Slaves  of  a  tyrannous  Necessity " 

Matthew  Arnold  had — and  it  is  a  rare  gift 
— in  spite  of  his  peaceful  domestic  life  and  in 
spite  of  that  "interlude"  of  the  "Marguerite" 
poems — a  noble  and  a  chaste  soul.  "Give  me 
a  clean  heart,  O  God,  and  renew  a  right  spirit 
within  me!"  prayed  the  Psalmist.  Well!  this 
friend  of  Thyrsis  had  "a  clean  heart"  and  "a 
right  spirit";  and  these  things,  in  this  turbu- 
lent age,  have  their  appeal !  It  was  the  purg- 
ing of  this  "hyssop"  that  made  it  possible  for 
him  even  in  the  "Marguerite"  poems,  to  write 
as  only  those  can  write  whose  passion  is  more 
than  the  craving  of  the  flesh. 

"Come  to  me  in  my  dreams  and  then 
"In  sleep  I  shall  be  well  again — 
"For  then  the  night  will  more  than  pay 
"The  hopeless  longing  of  the  day!" 

It  was  the  same  chastity  of  the  senses  that 
made  it  possible  for  him  to  write  those  verses 
upon  a  young  girl's  death,  which  are  so  much 
more  beautiful — though  those  are  lovely  too — 
than  the  ones  Oscar  Wilde  wrote  on  the  same 
subject. 

"Strew  on  her,  roses,  roses, 
"But  never  a  spray  of  yew ; 
"For  in  silence  she  reposes — 

163 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

*'Ah !  would  that  I  did  too ! 

"Her  cabined  ample  spirit 

"It  fluttered  and  failed  for  breath. 

"Tonight  it  doth  inherit 

"The  vasty  halls  of  death. 
Matthew  Arnold  is  one  of  the  poets  who  have 
what  might  be  called  "the  power  of  Libera- 
tion." He  liberates  us  from  the  hot  fevers  of 
our  lusts.  He  liberates  us  from  our  worldli- 
ness,  our  perversions,  our  mad  preoccupations. 
He  reduces  things  to  their  simple  elements  and 
gives  us  back  air  and  water  and  land  and  sea. 
And  he  does  this  without  demanding  from  us 
any  unusual  strain.  We  have  no  need  to 
plunge  into  Dionysian  ecstacies,  or  cry  aloud 
after  "cosmic  emotion." 

We  have  no  need  to  relinquish  our  common 
sense;  or  to  dress  or  eat  or  talk  or  dream,  in 
any  strange  manner.  It  is  enough  if  we  re- 
member the  fields  where  we  were  born.  It  is 
enough  if  we  do  not  altogether  forget  out  of 
what  quarter  of  the  sky  Orion  rises ;  and  where 
the  lord-star  Jupiter  has  his  place.  It  is  enough 
if  we  are  not  quite  oblivious  of  the  return  of 
the  Spring  and  the  sprouting  of  the  first  leaves. 

From  the  poetry  of  Matthew  Arnold  it  is 
possible  to  derive  an  art  of  life  which  carries 
us  back  to  the  beginnings  of  the  world's  his- 
tory. He,  the  civilized  Oxonian;  he,  domestic 
moralist ;  he,  the  airily  playful  scholar,  has  yet 
the  power  of  giving  that  Epic  solemnity  to  our 

164 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

sleep  and  our  waking;  to  our  "going  forth  to 
our  work  and  our  labour  until  the  evening"; 
to  the  passing  of  the  seasons  over  us ;  which  is 
the  ground  and  substance  of  all  poetic  imagi- 
nation, and  which  no  change  or  progress,  or 
discovery,  can  invade  or  spoil. 

For  it  is  the  nature  of  poetry  to  heighten 
and  to  throw  into  relief  those  eternal  things 
in  our  common  destiny  which  too  soon  get 
overlaid — And  some  things  only  poetry  can 
reach — Religion  may  have  small  comfort 
for  us  when  in  the  secret  depths  of  our  hearts 
we  endure  a  craving  of  which  we  may  not 
speak,  a  sickening  aching  longing  for  "the  lips 
so  sweetly  forsworn."  But  poetry  is  waiting 
for  us,  there  also,  with  her  Rosemary  and  her 
Rue.  Not  one  human  heart  but  has  its  hidden 
shrine  before  which  the  professional  minis- 
trants  are  fain  to  hold  their  peace.  But  even 
there,  under  the  veiled  Figure  itself,  some  poor 
poetic  "Jongleur  de  Notre  Dame"  is  permitted 
to  drop  his  monk's  robe,  and  dance  the  dance 
that  makes  time  and  space  nothing! 


165 


SHELLEY 


SHELLEY 

|NE  of  the  reasons  why  we  find  it 
hard  to  read  the  great  poets  is  that 
they  sadden  us  with  their  troubling" 
beauty.  Sadden  us — and  put  us  to 
shame !  They  compel  us  to  remember  the  days 
of  our  youth;  and  that  is  more  than  most  of 
us  are  able  to  bear!  What  memories!  Ye 
gods,  what  memories ! 

And  this  is  true,  above  all,  of  Shelley.  His 
verses,  when  we  return  to  them  again,  seem 
to  have  the  very  "perfume  and  suppliance"  of 
the  Spring;  of  the  Spring  of  our  frost-bitten 
age.  Their  sweetness  has  a  poignancy  and  a 
pang;  the  sweetness  of  things  too  dear;  of 
things  whose  beauty  brings  aching  and  a  sense 
of  bitter  loss.  It  is  the  sudden  uncovering  of 
dead  violets,  with  the  memory  of  the  soil  they 
were  plucked  from.  It  is  the  strain  of  music 
over  wide  waters — and  over  wider  years. 

These  verses  alwavs  had  somethinsf  about 
them  that  went  further  than  their  actual  mean- 
ing. They  were  always  a  little  like  planetary 
melodies,  to  which  earthly  words  had  been 
fitted.     And  now  they  carry  us,  not  only  be- 

169 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

yond  words,  but  beyond  thought, — "as  doth 
Eternity."  There  is,  indeed,  a  sadness  such 
as  one  cannot  bear  long  "and  live"  about  Shel- 
ley's poetry. 

It  troubles  our  peace.  It  passes  over  the 
sterility  of  our  poor  comfort  like  a  lost  child's 
cry.  It  beats  upon  the  door.  It  rattles  the  shut 
casement.  It  sobs  with  the  rain  upon  the  roof. 
This  is  partly  because  Shelley,  more  than  any 
poet,  has  entered  into  the  loneliness  of  the  ele- 
ments, and  given  up  his  heart  to  the  wind,  and 
his  soul  to  the  outer  darkness.  The  other  poets 
can  describe  these  things,  but  he  becomes  what 
they  are.  Listening  to  him,  we  listen  to  them. 
And  who  can  bear  to  listen  to  them?  Who,  in 
cold  blood,  can  receive  the  sorrows  of  the 
"many  waters"?  Who  can  endure  while  the 
heavens,  that  are  "themselves  so  old,"  bend 
down  with  the  burden  of  their  secret? 

Not  to  "describe,"  but  to  share  the  life,  or 
the  death-in-life,  of  the  thing  you  write  of,  that 
is  the  true  poetic  way.  The  "arrowy  odours" 
of  those  first  white  violets  he  makes  us  feel, 
darting  forth  from  among  the  dead  leaves,  do 
they  leave  us  content  with  the  art  of  their  de- 
scription? They  provoke  us  with  their  fine 
essence.  They  trouble  us  with  a  fatality  we 
have  to  share.  The  passing  from  its  "caverns 
of  rain"  of  the  newborn  cloud — we  do  not  only 
follow  it,  obedient  to  the  spell  of  rhetoric;  we 
are  whirled  forward  with  it,  laughing  at  its 


170 


SHELLEY 

"cenotaph"  and  our  own,  into  unimagined 
serial  spaces.  One  feels  all  this  and  more  un- 
der Shelley's  influence — but  alas!  as  soon  as 
one  has  felt  it,  the  old  cynical,  realistic  mood 
descends  again,  "heavy  as  frost,"  and  the  vis- 
ion of  ourselves,  poor,  straggling,  forked  ani- 
mals, caught  up  into  such  regions,  shows  but 
as  a  pantomimic  farce;  and  we  awake,  shamed 
and  clothed,  and  in  our  "right  mind!" 

With  poets,  with  Milton  and  Matthew  Arn- 
old, for  example,  there  is  always  a  kind  of  im- 
plicit sub-reference,  accompanying  the  heroic 
gesture  or  the  magical  touch,  to  our  poor  nor- 
mal humanity.  With  others,  with  Tennyson 
or  Browning,  for  instance,  one  is  often  rather 
absurdly  aware  of  the  worthy  Victorian  Per- 
son, behind  the  poetic  mask,  "singing"  his 
ethical  ditty — like  a  great,  self-conscious 
speckled  thrush  upon  a  prominent  bough. 

But  with  Shelley  everything  is  forgotten.  It 
is  the  authentic  fury,  the  divine  madness;  and 
we  pass  out  of  ourselves,  and  "suffer  a  sea- 
change  into  something  rich  and  strange." 
Into  something  "strange,"  perhaps,  rather 
than  something  "rich";  for  the  temperament 
of  Shelley,  like  that  of  Corot,  leads  him  to  sup- 
press the  more  glowing  threads  of  Nature's 
woof ;  leads  him  to  dissolve  everything  in  filmy 
white  light;  in  the  light  of  an  impossible 
dawn.  Has  it  been  noticed  how  all  material 
objects  dissolve  at  his  touch,  and  float  away, 

171 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

as  mists  and  vapours?  He  has,  it  seems,  an 
almost  insane  predilection  for  white  things. 
White  violets,  white  pansies,  white  wind- 
flowers,  white  ghosts,  white  daisies  and  white 
moons  thrill  us,  as  we  read,  with  an  almost  un- 
earthty  awe.  White  Death,  too;  the  shadow 
of  white  Corruption,  has  her  place  there,  and 
the  appalling  whiteness  of  lepers  and  corpses. 
The  liturgy  he  chants  is  the  liturgy  of  the 
White  Mass,  and  the  ''white  radiance"  of  Eter- 
nity is  his  Real  Presence. 

Weird  and  fantastic  though  Shelley's 
dreams  may  appear,  it  is  more  than  likely  that 
some  of  them  will  be  realized  before  we  expect 
it.  His  passionate  advocacy  of  what  now  is 
called  "Feminism,"  his  sublime  revolutionary 
hopes  for  the  proletariat,  his  denunciation  of 
w^ar,  his  arraignment  of  so-called  "Law"  and 
"Order,"  his  indictment  of  conventional  Mor- 
ality, his  onslaughts  on  outworn  Institutions, 
his  invectives  against  Hypocrisy  and  Stupid- 
ity, are  not  by  any  means  the  blind  Utopian 
rhetoric  that  some  have  called  them.  That 
crafty  slur  upon  l^rave  new  thought  which  we 
know  so  well — that  "how-can-you-take-him- 
seriously"  attitude  of  the  "status-quo"  rascals 
— must  not  mislead  us  with  regard  to  Shelley's 
philosophy. 

He  is  a  genuine  philosopher,  as  well  as  a 
dreamer.  Or  shall  we  say  he  is  the  only  kind 
of  philosopher  who  must  be  taken  seriously — 

172 


SHELLEY 

the  philosopher  who  creates  the  dreams  of  the 
young  ? 

Shelley  is,  indeed,  a  most  rare  and  invalu- 
able thinker,  as  well  as  a  most  exquisite  poet. 
His  thought  and  his  poetry  can  no  more  be 
separated  than  could  the  thought  and  poetry  of 
the  Book  of  Job.  His  poetry  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  his  thought,  its  swift  and  splendid  in- 
carnation. 

Strange  though  it  may  seem,  there  are  not 
very  many  poets  who  have  the  particular  kind 
of  ice-cold  intellect  necessary  if  one  is  to  de- 
tach one's  self  completely  from  the  idols  of  the 
market-place.  Indeed,  the  poetic  temperament 
is  only  too  apt,  out  of  the  very  warmth  of  its 
sensitive  humanity,  to  idealize  the  old  tradi- 
tions and  throw  a  e^lamour  around  them. 
That  is  wdiy,  both  in  politics  and  religion,  there 
have  been,  ever  since  Aristophanes,  so  many 
great  reactionary  poets.  Their  warmth  of 
human  sympathy,  their  "nihil  alienum"  atti- 
tude; nay!  their  very  sense  of  humour,  have 
made  this  inevitable.  There  is  so  often,  too, 
something  chilly  and  "unhomely,"  something 
pitiless  and  cruel,  about  quite  rational  reform, 
which  alienates  the  poetic  mind.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  the  very  thing  that  makes  so 
many  objects  poetical — I  mean  their  traditional 
association  with  normal  human  life — is  the 
thing  that  has  to  be  destroyed  if  the  new  birth 
is   to   take   place.     The   ice-cold   austerity   of 

173 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

mind,  indicated  in  the  superb  contempt  of  the 
Nietzschean  phrase,  "human,  too  human,"  is 
a  mood  essential,  if  the  world  is  to  cast  off  its 
"weeds  outworn."  Change  and  growth,  when 
they  are  living  and  organic,  imply  the  element 
of  destruction.  It  is  easy  enough  to  talk 
smoothly  about  natural  "evolution."  What 
Nature  herself  does,  as  we  are  beginning  to 
realize  at  last,  is  to  advance  by  leaps  and 
bounds.  One  of  these  mad  leaps  having  pro- 
duced the  human  brain,  it  is  for  us  to  follow 
her  example  and  slough  off  another  Past. 
Man  is  that  zvhich  has  to  be  left  behind!  We 
thus  begin  to  see  what  I  must  be  allowed  to 
call  the  essential  inhumanity  of  the  true 
prophet.  The  false  prophet  is  known  by  noth- 
ing so  easily  as  by  his  crying  "peace" — his 
crying,  "hands  off!  enough!" 

It  is  tragic  to  think  how  little  the  world  has 
changed  since  Shelley's  time,  and  how  horribly 
relevant  to  the  present  hour  are  his  outcries 
against  Militarism,  Capitalism  and  Privilege. 
If  evidence  were  wanted  of  the  profound  moral 
value  of  Shelley's  revolutionary  thought,  one 
has  only  to  read  the  proclamations  of  any  in- 
ternational school  of  Socialistic  propaganda, 
and  find  how  they  are  fighting  now  what  he 
fought  then.  His  ideas  have  never  been  more 
necessary  than  they  are  today.  Tolstoi  has 
preached  some  of  them,  Bernard  Shaw  others, 
and  Mr.  Wells  yet  others.     But  none  of  our 

174 


SHELLEY 

modern  rebels  have  managed  to  give  to  their 
new  thought  quite  the  comprehensiveness  and 
daring  which  we  find  in  him. 

And  he  has  achieved  this  by  the  intensity  of 
his  devotion.  Modern  literary  Anarchists  are 
so  inclined  to  fall  into  jocularity,  and  irony, 
and  "human,  too  human"  humour.  Their 
Hamlet-like  consciousness  of  the  "many 
mansions"  of  truth  tends  to  paralyse  the 
impetus  of  their  challenge.  They  are  so 
often,  too,  dramatists  and  novelists  rather  than 
prophets,  and  their  work,  while  it  gains  in 
sympathy  and  subtlety,  loses  in  directness. 
The  immense  encouragement  given  to  really 
drastic,  original  thought  by  Nietzsche's  writ- 
ings is  an  evidence  of  the  importance  of  what 
might  be  called  cruel  positivity  in  human 
thinking.  Shelley  has,  however,  an  advantage 
over  Nietzsche  in  his  recognition  of  the  trans- 
formative power  of  "love."  In  this  respect, 
iconoclast  though  he  is,  he  is  rather  with  the 
Buddha  and  the  Christ  than  with  the  modern 
antinomians. 

His  mania  for  "love" — one  can  call  it  noth- 
ing else — frees  his  revolutionary  thought  from 
that  arbitrary  isolation,  that  savage  subjectiv- 
ity, which  one  notes  in  many  philosophical  an- 
archists. His  Platonic  insistence,  too,  on  the 
more  spiritual  aspects  of  "love"  separates  his 
anti-Christian  "Immorality"  from  the  easy-go- 

175 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ing,  pleasant  hedonism  of  such  a  bold  individ- 
ualist as  Remy  de  Gourmont. 

Shelley's  individualism  is  always  a  thing 
with  open  doors;  a  thing  with  corridors  into 
Eternity.  It  never  conveys  that  sad,  cynical, 
pessimistic  sense  of  "eating  and  drinking"  be- 
fore we  die,  which  one  is  so  familiar  with  just 
now. 

It  is  precisely  this  fact  that  those  who  repro- 
bate Shelley's  "immorality"  should  remember. 
With  him  "love"  was  truly  a  mystical  initia- 
tion, a  religious  sacrament,  a  means  of  getting 
into  touch  with  the  cosmic  secret,  a  path — and 
perhaps  the  only  path — to  the  Beatific  Vision. 

It  is  not  wise  to  turn  away  from  Shelley  be- 
cause of  his  lack  of  "humour,"  of  his  lack  of  a 
"sense  of  proportion."  The  mystery  of  the 
world,  whatever  it  may  be,  shows  itself  some- 
times quite  as  indifferent  as  Shelley  to  these 
little  nuances.  We  hear  it  crying  aloud  in  the 
night  with  no  humorous  cry ;  and  it  is  too  often 
to  stop  our  ears  to  what  we  hear,  that  we  jest 
so  lightly!  It  is  doubtful  whether  Nature 
cares  greatly  for  our  "sense  of  proportion." 

To  return  to  his  poetry,  as  poetry.  The  re- 
markable thing  about  Shelley's  verse  is  the 
manner  in  which  his  whole  physical  and  psy- 
chic temperament  has  passed  into  it.  This  is 
so  in  a  measure  with  all  poets,  but  it  is  so  espe- 
cially with  him.  His  beautiful  epicene  face,  his 
boyish    figure,     his    unearthly    sensitiveness, 

176 


SHELLEY 

haunt  us  as  we  read  his  lines.  They  allure 
and  baffle  us,  as  the  smile  on  the  lips  of  the 
Mona  Lisa.  One  has  the  impression  of  lis- 
tening to  a  being  who  has  really  traversed  the 
ways  of  the  sea  and  returned  with  its  secret. 
How  else  could  those  indescribable  pearly 
shimmerings,  those  opal  tints  and  rosy 
shadows,  be  communicated  to  our  poor  langu- 
age? The  very  purity  of  his  nature,  that 
ethereal  quality  in  it  that  strikes  a  chill  into 
the  heart  of  "normal  humanity,"  lends  a  magic, 
like  the  reflection  of  moonlight  upon  ice,  to 
these  inter-lunar  melodies.  The  same  ethereal 
transparency  of  passion  which  excites,  by 
reason  of  its  sublime  ''immorality,"  the  gross 
fury  of  the  cynical  and  the  base,  gives  an  im- 
mortal beauty,  cold  and  distant  and  beyond 
"the  shadow  of  our  night,"  to  his  planetary 
melodies.  It  is,  indeed,  the  old  Pythagorean 
"music  of  the  spheres"  audible  at  last  again. 
Such  sounds  has  the  silence  that  descends  upon 
us  when  we  look  up,  above  the  roofs  of  the 
city,  at  Arcturus  or  Aldeporan!  To  return  to 
Shelley  from  the  turmoil  of  our  gross  excite- 
ments and  cramped  domesticities  is  to  bathe  our 
foreheads  in  the  "dew  of  the  morning"  and 
cool  our  hands  in  the  ultimate  Sea.  Whatever 
in  us  transcends  the  vicious  circle  of  personal 
desire;  whatever  in  us  belongs  to  that  Life 
which  lasts  while  we  and  our  individual  crav- 
ings perish ;  whatever  in  us  underlies  and  over- 

12  177 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

looks  this  mad  procession  of  "births  and  for- 
gettings;"  whatever  in  us  "beacons  from  the 
abode  where  the  Eternal  are,"  rises  to  meet 
this  celestial  harmony,  and  sloughs  off  the 
"muddy  vesture"  that  would  "grossly  close  it 
in."  What  separates  Shelley  from  all  other 
poets  is  that  with  them  "art"  is  the  paramount 
concern,  and,  after  "art,"  morality. 

With  him  one  thinks  little  of  art,  little  of 
the  substance  of  any  material  "teaching;"  one 
is  simply  transported  into  the  high,  cold 
regions  where  the  creative  gods  build,  like 
children,  domes  of  "many-coloured  glass," 
wherewith  to  "stain  the  white  radiance  of  eter- 
nity." And  after  such  a  plunge  into  the  ante- 
natal reservoirs  of  life,  we  may,  if  we  can,  go 
on  spitting  venom  and  raking  in  the  gutter 
with  the  old  too-human  zest,  and  let  the  "inef- 
fectual" madman  pass  and  be  forgotten ! 

I  said  that  the  effect  of  his  writing  is  to 
trouble  and  sadden  us.  It  was  as  a  man  I 
spoke.  That  in  us  which  responds  to  Shelley's 
verse  is  precisely  what  dreams  of  the  transmu- 
tation of  "man"  into  "beyond-man."  That 
which  saddens  humanity  beyond  words  is  the 
daily  food  of  the  immortals. 

And  yet,  even  in  the  circle  of  our  natural 
moods,  there  is  something,  sometimes,  that  re- 
sponds to  such  strains  as  "When  the  lamp  is 
shattered"  and  "One  word  is  too  often  pro- 
faned."    Perhaps  only  those  who  have  known 

178 


SHELLEY 

what  it  is  to  love  as  children  love,  and  to  lose 
hope  with  the  absoluteness  wherewith  children 
lose  it,  can  enter  competely  into  this  delicate 
despair.  It  is,  indeed,  the  long,  pitiful,  sob- 
bing cry  of  bewildered  disenchantment  that 
breaks  the  heart  of  youth  when  it  first  learns 
of  what  gross  clay  earth  and  men  are  made. 

And  the  artless  simplicity  of  Shelley's  tech- 
nique— much  more  really  simple  than  the  con- 
scious "childishness,"  exquisite  though  that  is, 
of  a  Blake  or  Verlaine — lends  itself  so  wonder- 
fully to  the  expression  of  youth's  eternal  sor- 
row. His  best  lyrics  use  words  that  fall  into 
their  places  with  the  "dying  fall"  of  an  actual 
fit  of  sobbing.  And  they  are  so  naturally 
chosen,  his  images  and  metaphors!  Even 
when  they  seem  most  remote,  they  are  such  as 
frail  young  hearts  cannot  help  happening  upon, 
as  they  soothe  their  'iove-laden  souls"  in  "se- 
cret hour." 

The  infallible  test  of  genuine  poetry  is  that 
it  forces  us  to  recall  emotions  that  we  ourselves 
have  had,  with  the  very  form  and  circumstance 
of  their  passion.  And  who  can  read  the  verses 
of  Shelley  without  recalling  such?  That  pe- 
culiar poignancy  of  memory,  like  a  sharp  spear, 
which  arrests  us  at  the  smell  of  certain  plants 
or  mosses,  or  nameless  earth-mould,  or 
"growths  by  the  margins  of  pond-waters;" 
that  poignancy  which  brings  back  the  inde- 
scribable balm  of  Spring  and  the  bitter-sweet- 

179 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ness  of  irremediable  loss;  who  can  communi- 
cate it  like  Shelley? 

There  are  lovely  touches  of  foreign  scenery 
in  his  poems,  particularly  of  the  vineyards  and 
olive  gardens  and  clear-cut  hill  towns  of  Italy; 
but  for  English  readers  it  will  always  be  the 
rosemary  "that  is  for  remembrance"  and  the 
pansies  that  "are  for  thoughts"  that  give  their 
perfume  to  the  feelings  he  excites. 

Other  poets  may  be  remembered  at  other 
times,  but  it  is  when  the  sun-warmed  woods 
smell  of  the  first  primroses,  and  the  daffodils, 
coming  "before  the  swallow  dares,"  lift  up 
their  heads  above  the  grass,  that  the  sting  of 
this  sweetness,  too  exquisite  to  last  beyond  a 
moment,  brings  its  intolerable  hope  and  its  in- 
tolerable regret. 


180 


KEATS 


KEATS 


T  is  well  that  there  should  be  at  least 
one  poet  of  Beauty — of  Beauty  alone 
— of  Beauty  and  naught  else.  It  is 
well  that  one  should  dare  to  follow 
that  terrible  goddess  even  to  the  bitter  end. 
That  pitiless  marble  altar  has  its  victims,  as 
the  other  Altars.  The  "white  implacable 
Aphrodite"  cries  aloud  for  blood — for  the  blood 
of  our  dearest  affections;  for  the  blood  of  our 
most  cherished  hopes ;  for  the  blood  of  our  in- 
tegrity and  faith ;  for  the  blood  of  our  reason. 
She  drugs  us,  blinds  us,  tortures  us,  maddens 
us,  and  slays  us — yet  we  follow  her — to  the 
bitter  end! 

Beauty  hath  her  Martyrs,  as  the  rest;  and 
of  these  Keats  is  the  Protagonist ;  the  youngest 
and  the  fairest;  the  most  enamoured  victim. 
From  those  extraordinary  letters  of  his,  to  his 
friends  and  to  his  love,  we  gather  that  this 
fierce  amorist  of  Beauty  was  not  without  his 
Philosophy.  The  Philosophy  of  Keats,  as  we 
gather  up  the  threads  of  it,  one  by  one,  in  those 
fleeting  confessions,  is  nothing  but  the  old 
polytheistic  paganism,  reduced  to  terms  of  mod- 

183 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ern  life.  He  was  a  born  "Pluralist,"  to  use 
the  modern  phrase;  and  for  him,  in  this  con- 
geries of  separate  and  unique  miracles,  which 
we  call  the  World,  there  was  neither  Unity, 
nor  Progress,  nor  Purpose,  nor  Over-soul — 
nothing  but  the  mystery  of  Beauty,  and  the 
Memory  of  great  men ! 

His  way  of  approaching  Nature,  his  way  of 
approaching  every  event  in  life,  was  "pluralis- 
tic." He  did  not  ask  that  things  should  come 
in  upon  him  in  logical  order  or  in  rational  co- 
herence. He  only  asked  that  each  unique  per- 
son who  appeared;  each  unique  hill-side  or 
meadow  or  hedgerow  or  vineyard  or  flower  or 
tree;  should  be  for  him  a  new  incarnation  of 
Beauty,  a  new  avatar  of  the  merciless  One  he 
followed. 

Never  has  there  been  a  poet  less  mystical — 
never  a  poet  less  moral.  The  ground  and  soil, 
and  sub-soil,  of  his  nature,  was  Sensuality — a 
rich,  quivering,  tormented  Sensuality! 

If  you  will,  you  may  use,  for  what  he  was, 
the  word  "materialistic" ;  but  such  a  word  gives 
an  absurdly  wrong  impression.  The  physical 
nerves  of  his  abnormally  troubled  senses,  were 
too  exquisitely,  too  passionately  stirred,  to  let 
their  vibrations  die  away  in  material  bondage. 
They  quiver  oflf  into  remotest  psychic  waves, 
these  shaken  strings;  and  a  touch  will  send 
them  shuddering  into  the  high  regions  of  the 
Spirit.     For  a  nature  like  this,  with  the  fever 

184 


KEATS 

of  consumption  wasting  his  tissues,  and  the 
fever  of  his  thirst  for  Beauty  ravaging  his  soul, 
it  was  nothing  less  than  the  cruellest  tragedy 
that  he  should  have  been  driven  by  the  phan- 
tom-flame of  sex-illusion  to  find  all  the  magic 
and  wonder  of  the  Mystery  he  worshiped, 
caught,  imprisoned,  enclosed,  blighted,  in  the 
poisonous  loveliness  of  one  capricious  girl.  An 
anarchist  at  heart — as  so  many  great  artists 
are — Keats  hated,  with  a  furious  hatred,  any 
bastard  claims  and  privileges  that  insolently 
intruded  themselves  between  the  godlike  senses 
of  Man  and  the  divine  madness  of  their  quest. 
Society?  the  Public?  Moral  Opinion?  Intel- 
lectual Fashion?  The  manners  and  customs  of 
the  Upper  Classes?  What  were  all  these  but 
vain  impertinences,  interrupting  his  desperate 
Pursuit?  "Every  gentleman"  he  cried  "is  my 
natural  enemy!" 

The  feverish  fanaticism  of  his  devotion  knew 
absolutely  no  limits.  His  cry  day  and  night 
was  for  "new  sensations";  and  such  "sensa- 
tion," a  mere  epicurean  indulgence  to  others, 
was  a  lust,  a  madness,  a  frenzy,  a  fury,  a  rush- 
ing upon  death,  to  him. 

How  young  he  was,  how  pitifully  young, 
when  the  Foam-born,  jealous  of  him  as  she 
was  jealous  of  Hyppolytus,  hurled  him  bleeding 
to  the  ground ! 

But  what  Poetry  he  has  left  behind  him! 
There  is  nothing  like  it  in  the  world.    Nothing 

185 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

like  it,  for  sheer,  deadly,  draining,  maddening, 
drowsing  witchery  of  beauty.  It  is  the  very 
cup  of  Circe — the  very  philtre  of  Sun-poison. 
"A  thing  of  Beauty  is  a  Joy  forever" !  A  Joy? 
Yes — but  a  Joy  drugged  from  its  first  pouring 
forth.  We  follow.  We  have  to  follow.  But, 
O  the  weariness  of  the  way ! 

What  an  exultant  hymn  that  is, — the  one  in 
honour  of  Pan,  which  comes  so  soon  in  Endy- 
mion !  The  dim  rich  depths  of  the  dark  forests 
are  stirred  by  it,  and  its  murmurs  die  away, 
over  the  wailing  spaces  of  the  marshes.  Ob- 
scure growths,  and  drowsy  weeds  overhanging 
moon-lit  paths,  where  fungoid  things  fumble 
for  light  and  air,  hear  that  cry  in  their  volup- 
tuous dreams  and  move  uneasily.  The  dumb 
vegetable  expectancy  of  young  tree-trunks  is 
roused  by  it  into  sensual  terror.  For  this  is 
the  sound  of  the  hoof  of  Pan,  stamping  on  the 
moist  earth,  as  he  rages  for  Syrinx.  No  one 
has  ever  understood  the  torment  of  the  Wood- 
god  and  his  mad  joy,  as  the  author  of  Endy- 
mion  understood  them.  The  tumultuous 
ground-swell  of  this  poet's  insane  craving  for 
Beauty  must  in  the  end  have  driven  him  on 
the  rocks;  but  there  came  sometimes  softer, 
gentler,  less  "vermeil-tinctured"  moods,  which 
might  have  prolonged  his  days,  had  he  never 
met  *'that  girl." 

"The  Pot  of  Basil"  expresses  one  of  these. 
Wistful  and  heart-breaking,   it  has  a  tender 

186 


KEATS 

yearning  pity  in  it,  a  gentle  melancholy  brook- 
ing, over  the  irremediable  pain  of  love-loss, 
which  haunts  one  like  the  sound  of  drowned 
Angelus-bells,  under  a  hushed  sea.  The  de- 
scription of  the  appearance  of  the  ghost  of  the 
dead  boy  and  his  vague  troubled  speech,  is  like 
nothing  else  that  has  ever  been  written. 

St.  Agnes  Eve  too,  in  its  more  elaborate, 
more  premeditated  art,  has  a  beauty  so  poig- 
nant, so  sensuously  unearthly,  that  one  dare 
not  quote  a  line  of  it,  in  a  mere  "critical  essay," 
for  fear  of  breaking  such  a  spell ! 

The  long-drawn  solemn  harmonies  of  "Hy- 
perion"— Miltonian,  and  yet  troubled  by  a 
thrilling  sorcery  that  Milton  never  knew — 
madden  the  reader  with  anger  that  he  never 
finished  it;  an  anger  which  is  only  increased 
when  in  that  other  "Version,"  the  influence  of 
Dante  becomes  evident.  "La  Belle  Dame  Sans 
Merci!"  Ah,  there  we  find  him — there  we 
await  him — the  poet  of  the  tragedy  of  bodily 
craving,  transferred,  with  all  its  aching,  fam- 
ished nerves,  on  to  the  psychic  plane! 

For  "La  Belle  Dame"  is  the  Litany  of  the 
Beauty-Maniac — his  death-in-life  Requiem, 
his  eternal  Dirge!  Those  who  have  ever 
met  Her,  this  "Lady  in  the  mead,  full- 
beautiful,  a  fairy-child,"  whose  foot  "was 
light"  and  whose  hair  "was  long"  and  whose 
eyes  "were  wild,"  will  know — and  only  they — 
the  meaning  of  "the  starved  lips,  through  the 

187 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

gloom,  with  horrid  warning,  gaping  wide" ! 
And  has  the  secret  of  the  gasping  pause  of 
that  broken  half-hne,  ''where  no  birds  sing," 
borrowed  originally  from  poor  Ophelia's  de- 
spair, and  echoed  wonderfully  by  Mr.  Hardy 
in  certain  of  his  incomparable  lyrics,  been  con- 
veyed to  my  reader? 

But  it  is,  of  course,  in  his  five  great  Odes, 
that  Keats  is  most  supreme,  most  entirely, 
without  question,  the  unapproachable  artist. 
Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  shatter  the  sacred 
silence  that  such  things  produce,  by  any  pro- 
fane repetition !  They  leave  behind  them,  every 
one  of  them,  an  echo,  a  vibration,  a  dying  fall, 
leaving  us  enchanted  and  trembling;  as  when 
we  have  been  touched,  before  the  twittering  of 
the  birds  at  dawn,  by  the  very  fingers  of  Our 
Lady  of  sweet  Pain! 

Is  it  possible  that  words,  mere  words,  can 
work  such  miracles?  Or  are  they  not  words 
at  all,  but  chalices  and  Holy  graals,  of  human 
passion,  full  of  the  life-blood,  staining  the  lips 
that  approach  them  scarlet,  of  heart-drained 
pulse-wearied  ravishment? 

Certainly  he  has  the  touch,  ineffable,  final, 
absolute,  of  the  supreme  Beauty.  And  over 
it  all,  over  the  ardours  and  ecstasies,  hangs  the 
shadow  of  Death;  and  in  the  heart  of  it,  an 
adder  in  the  deep  drugged  cup,  coiled  and  wait- 
ing, the  poisonous  bite  of  incurable  anguish! 
We  may  stand  mesmerized,  spell-bound,  amid 

188 


KEATS 

"the  hushed  cool-rooted  flowers,  fragrant- 
eyed"  watching  Psyche  sleep.  We  may  open 
those  ''charmed  magic  casements"  towards 
"the  perilous  foam."  We  may  linger  with 
Ruth  "sick  for  home  amid  the  alien  corn." 
We  may  gaze,  awed  and  hushed,  at  the  dead, 
cold,  little,  mountain-built  town,  "emptied  of 
its  folks" — We  may  "glut  our  sorrow  on  the 
morning  rose,  or  on  the  wealth  of  globed 
Peonies."  We  may  "imprison  our  mistress's 
soft  hand,  and  gaze,  deep,  deep,  within  her 
peerless  eyes."  We  may  brood,  quieted  and 
sweetly-sad,  upon  the  last  melancholy  "ooz- 
ings"  of  the  rich  year's  vintage.  But  across 
all  these  things  lies,  like  a  streak  of  red,  breath- 
catching,  spilled  heart's  blood,  the  knowledge 
of  zvhat  it  means  to  have  been  able  to  turn  all 
this  into  poetry ! 

It  means  Torment.  It  means  Despair.  It 
means  that  cry,  out  of  the  dust  of  the  cemetery 
at  Rome,  "O  God!  O  God!  has  there  ever  been 
such  pain  as  my  pain?" 

I  suppose  Keats  suffered  more  in  his  brief 
life  than  any  mortal  child  of  the  Muses.  These 
ultimate  creations  of  supreme  Beauty  are 
evoked  in  no  other  way.  Everything  has  to  be 
sacrificed — everything — if  we  are  to  be — like 
the  gods,  creators  of  Life.  For  Life  is  a  thing 
that  can  only  be  born  in  that  soil — only  planted 
where  the  wound  goes  deepest — only  watered 
when  we  strike  where  that  fountain  flows! 


189 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

He  wrote  for  himself.  The  crowd,  the  ver- 
dict of  his  friends — what  did  all  that  matter? 
He  wrote  for  himself;  and  for  those  who  dare 
to  risk  the  taste  of  that  wine,  which  turns  the 
taste  of  all  else  to  a  weary  irrelevance ! 

One  is  unwilling  to  leave  our  Adonais, 
whose  "annual  wound  in  Lebanon  allures"  us 
thus  fatally,  with  nothing  but  such  a  bitter  cry. 
One  has  a  pathetic  human  longing  to  think  of 
him  as  he  zvas,  in  those  few  moments  of  unal- 
loyed pleasure  the  gods  allowed  him  before 
"consumption,"  and  "that  girl,"  poisoned  the 
springs  of  his  life!  And  those  moments,  how 
they  have  passed  into  his  poetry  like  the  breath 
of  the  Spring ! 

When  "the  grand  obsession"  was  not  upon 
him,  who,  like  Keats,  can  make  us  feel  the  cool, 
sweet,  wholesome  touch  of  our  great  Mother, 
the  Earth?  That  sleep,  "full  of  sweet  dreams 
and  health  and  quiet  breathing,"  which  the 
breast  that  suckled  Persephone  alone  can  give 
may  heal  us  also  for  a  brief  while. 

We,  too,  on  this  very  morning — listen  read- 
er!— may  wreath  "  a  flowery  band  to  bind  us 
to  the  Earth,  spite  of  despondence."  Some 
"shape  of  beauty  may  yet  move  away  the  pall 
from  our  dark  spirits."  Even  with  old  Saturn 
under  his  weight  of  grief,  we  may  drink  in  the 
loveliness  of  those  "green-robed  senators  of 
mighty  woods,  tall  oaks,  branch-charmed  by 
the  earnest  stars."     And  in  the  worst  of  our 


190 


KEATS 

moods  we  can  still  call  aloud  to  the  things  of 
beauty  that  pass  not  away.     We  can  even  call 
out  to  them  from  her  very  side  who  is  "the 
cause,"  "the  cause,  my  soul,"  of  what  we  suffer. 
"Bright  star,  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou 
art! 
Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night. 
And  watching,  with^eternal  lids  apart. 
Like  Nature's  patient,  sleepless  eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priest-like  task 
Of    pure     ablution     round     earth's     human 
shores — " 
This  desperate,  sensuous  pain  which  makes  us 
cry  out  to  the  "midnight"  that  we  might  "cease 
upon  it,"  need  not  harden  our  hearts  before 
we  pass  hence.    The  "gathering  swallows  twit- 
tering in  the  sky"  of  our  little  interludes  of 
peace  may  still  attune  us  to  some  strange,  sad 
thankfulness  that  we  have  been  born  into  life, 
even  though  life  turned  out  to  mean  this! 

And  the  vibrating,  stricken  nerves  of  our 
too  great  devotion  may  have  at  least  the  balm 
of  feeling  that  they  have  not  languished  un- 
touched by  the  fingers  that  thrill  while  they 
slay.  After  all,  "we  have  lived";  we  also;  and 
we  would  not  "change  places"  with  those 
"happy  innocents"  who  have  never  known  the 
madness  of  what  it  may  be  to  have  been  born 
a  son  of  man ! 

But  let  none  be  deluded.  The  tragic  life 
upon  earth  is  not  the  life  of  the  spirit,  but  the 

191 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

life  of  the  senses.  The  senses  are  the  aching 
doors  to  the  greatest  mystery  of  all,  the  mys- 
tery of  our  tyranny  over  one  another.  Does 
anyone  think  that  that  love  is  greater,  more 
real,  more  poignant,  which  can  stand  over  the 
dead  body  of  its  One-of-all,  and  dream  of  en- 
counters and  reconciliations,  in  other  worlds? 
It  is  not  so!  What  we  have  loved  is  cold,  cold 
and  dead,  and  has  become  that  thing  we  scarce- 
ly recognise.  Can  any  vague,  spiritual  reun- 
ion make  up  for  the  loss  of  the  little  gestures, 
the  little  touches,  tJie  little  zvays,  we  shall  never 
through  all  eternity  know  again?  Ah!  those 
reluctances  and  hesitations,  over  now,  quite 
over  now!  Ah!  those  fretful  pleadings,  those 
strange  withdrawals,  those  unheeded  protests ; 
nothing,  less  than  nothing,  and  mere  mem- 
ories! When  the  life  of  the  senses  invades  the 
affections  of  the  heart — then,  then,  mon  en- 
fant, comes  the  pinch  and  the  sting! 

And  this  is  what  happens  with  such  doomed 
sensualists  as  Keats  was.  What  tortured  him 
in  death  was  the  thought  that  he  must  leave 
his  darling — and  the  actual  look,  touch,  air, 
ways  and  presence  of  her,  forever.  ''Vain,"  as 
that  inspired  Lover,  Emily  Bronte,  cries,  "vain, 
unutterably  vain,  are  'all  the  creeds'  that  would 
console!"  Tired  of  hearing  "simple  truth  mis- 
called simplicity" ;  tired  of  all  the  weariness  of 
life — from  these  we  "would  begone" — "save 
that  to  die  we  leave  our  love  alone" ! 


192 


KEATS 

But  it  is  not  only  in  the  fatal  danger  of  eter- 
nal separation  from  the  flesh  that  has  become 
to  us  more  necessary  than  sun  or  moon,  that 
the  tragedy  of  the  senses  lies.  It  lies  in  the 
very  intensity  with  which  we  have  sifted,  win- 
nowed, tormented  and  refined  these  panthers  of 
holy  lust.  Those  who  understand  the  poetry 
of  Keats  recognise  that  in  the  passion  which 
burns  him  for  the  "heavenly  quintessence,"  as 
Marlowe  calls  it,  there  is  also  the  ghastly  dan- 
ger of  reaction.  The  pitiless  hands  of  Joy  "are 
ever  at  his  lips,  bidding  adieu,"  and  "veiled 
melancholy  has  her  'sovran  shrine'  in  the  heart 
of  all  delight." 

This  is  the  curse  upon  those  who  follow  the 
supreme  Beauty — that  is  to  say,  the  Beauty 
that  belongs,  not  to  ideas  and  ideals,  but  to 
living  forms.  They  are  driven  by  the  gross 
pressure  of  circumstance  to  forsake  her,  to 
leave  her,  to  turn  aside  and  eat  husks  with  the 
swine ! 

It  is  the  same  with  that  supreme  mystery  of 
words  themselves,  out  of  which  such  an  ar- 
tist as  this  one  was  creates  his  spells  and  his 
sorcery.  How,  after  tasting,  drop  by  drop,  that 
draught  of  "lingered  sweetness  long  drawn- 
out"  of  his  unequalled  style,  can  we  bear  to 
fall  back  upon  the  jabbering  and  screeching, 
the  howling  and  hissing,  of  the  voices  we  have 
to  listen  to  in  common  resort?  Ah.  child, 
child!     Think  carefully  before  you  turn  your 

13  .  193 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

candid-innocent  eyes  to  the  fatal  entrance  to 
these  mysteries!.  It  is  better  never  to  have 
known  what  the  high,  terrible  loveliness  of 
Her  of  Melos  is  than,  having  seen  her,  to  pass 
the  rest  of  our  days  with  these  copies,  and  pros- 
titutions, and  profanations,  and  parodies, 
"which  mimic  humanity  so  abominably"  ! 

That  is  the  worst  of  it.  That  is  the  sting  of 
it.  All  the  great  quests  in  this  world  tempt  us 
and  destroy  us,  for,  though  they  may  touch  our 
famished  lips  once  and  again  before  we  per- 
ish, one  thing  they  cannot  do — one  thing 
Beauty  herself,  the  most  sacred  of  all  such 
quests,  cannot  do — and  that  is  to  make  the  arid 
intervals  of  our  ordinary  life  tolerable,  when 
we  have  to  return  to  the  common  world,  and 
the  people  and  things  that  stand  gaping  in  that 
world,  like  stupid,  staring  idols! 

But  what  matter?  Let  us  pay  the  penalty. 
Let  us  pay  the  price.  Is  it  not  worth  it? 
Beauty!  O  divine,  O  cruel  Mistress!  Thee, 
thee  we  must  worship  still,  and  with  thee  the 
acolytes  who  bear  thy  censers !  For  the  secret 
of  life  is  to  take  every  risk  without  fear;  even 
the  risk  of  finding  one's  self  an  exile,  with  "no 
shrine,  no  grove,  no  oracle,  no  heat  of  pale- 
mouthed  prophet  dreaming"  in  the  land  with- 
out memories,  without  altars,  without  Thee! 


194 


NIETZSCHE 


NIETZSCHE 


r  is  not  the  hour  in  which  to  say- 
much  about  Nietzsche.  The  dissen- 
tient voices  are  silent.  The  crowd 
has  stopped  howHng-.  But  a  worse 
thing  is  happening  to  him,  the  thing  of  all 
others  he  dreaded  most; — he  is  becoming  "ac- 
cepted"— The  preachers  are  quoting  him  and 
the  theologians  are  explaining  him. 

What  he  would  himself  pray  for  now  are 
Enemies — fierce  irreconcilable  Enemies — but 
our  age  cannot  produce  such.  It  can  only  pro- 
duce sneering  disparagement;  or  frightened 
conventional  approbation. 

What  one  would  like  to  say,  at  this  particular 
juncture,  is  that  here,  or  again  there,  this 
deadly  antagonist  of  God  missed  his  aim.  But 
who  can  say  that  ?  He  aimed  too  surely.  No, 
he  did  not  miss  his  aim.  He  smote  whom  he 
went  out  to  smite.  But  one  thing  he  could  not 
smite;  he  could  neither  smite  it,  or  unmask  it, 
or  '^transvalue"  it.  I  mean  the  Earth  itself — 
the  great,  shrewd,  wise,  all-enduring  Mother 
of  us  all — who  knows  so  much,  and  remains  so 
silent! 


197 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

And  sometimes  one  feels,  walking  some 
country  road,  with  the  smell  of  upturned  sods 
and  heavy  leaf-mould  in  one's  nostrils,  that 
even  Lucifer  himself  is  not  as  deep  or  strong 
or  wise  as  is  patient  furrowed  earth  and  her 
blundering  children.  A  rough  earth-hint,  a 
Rabelaisian  ditty,  a  gross  amazing  jest,  a 
chuckle  of  deep  Satyric  humour; — and  the 
monstrous  "thickness"  of  Life,  its  friendly 
aplomb  and  nonchalence,  its  grotesque  irre- 
verence, its  shy  shrewd  common-sense,  its 
tough  fibres,  and  portentous  indifiference  to 
"distinction" ;  tumbles  us  over  in  the  mud — for 
all  our  "aloofness" — and  roars  over  us,  like  a 
romping  bull-calf! 

The  antidote  to  Nietzsche  is  not  to  be  found 
in  the  company  of  the  Saints.  He  was  too 
much  of  a  Saint  himself  for  that.  It  is  to  be 
found  in  the  company  of  Shakespearean  clod- 
hoppers, and  Rabelaisian  topers,  and  Cervan- 
tian  serving-wenches.  In  fact,  it  is  to  be  found, 
as  with  the  antidotes  for  other  noble  excesses, 
in  burying  your  face  in  rough  moist  earth; 
and  grubbing  for  pig-nuts  under  the  beech- 
trees.  A  summer's  day  in  the  woods  with 
Audrey  will  put  "Fatality"  into  its  place  and 
remove  "the  Recurrence  of  all  things"  to  a 
very  modest  remoteness.  And  this  is  not  a 
relinquishing  of  the  secret  of  life.  This  is  not 
a  giving  up  of  the  supreme  quest.  It  is  an 
opening  of  another  door ;  a  letting  in  of  a  dif- 

198 


NIETZSCHE 

ferent  air;  a  reversion  to  a  more  primitive  level 
of  the  mystery. 

The  way  to  reduce  the  tyranny  of  this  proud 
spirit  to  its  proper  proportion  is  not  to  talk 
about  ''Love''  or  "Morality"  or  "Orthodoxy," 
or  "the  strength  of  the  vulgar  herd" — it  is 
simply  to  call  up  in  one's  mind  the  motley  pro- 
cession of  gross,  simple,  quaint,  bulbous,  irre- 
pressible objects — human  and  otherwise — 
whose  mere  existence  makes  it  as  impossible 
for  Nietzsche  to  deal  with  the  massiveness  of 
Life,  as  it  is  impossible  for  anyone  else  to  deal 
with  it. 

No,  we  shall  not  free  ourselves  from  his  in- 
tellectual predominence  by  taking  refuge  with 
the  Saints.  We  shall  not  do  this  because  he 
himself  was  essentially  a  Saint.  A  Saint  and 
a  Martyr !    Is  it  for  me  now  to  prove  that  ? 

It  is  realized,  I  suppose,  what  the  history  of 
his  spiritual  contest  actually  was?  It  was  a 
deliberate  self-inflicted  Crucifixion  of  the 
Christ  in  him,  as  an  offering  to  the  Apollo  in 
him.  Nietzsche  was — that  cannot  be  denied — 
an  Intellectual  Sadist ;  and  his  Intellectual  Sad- 
ism took  the  form — as  it  can  (he  has  himself 
taught  us  so)  take  many  curious  forms — of  de- 
ilberately  outraging  his  own  most  sensitive 
nerves.  This  is  really  what  broke  his  reason, 
in  the  end.  By  a  process  of  spiritual  vivisec- 
tion— the  sufifering  of  which  one  dare  not  con- 
ceive— he    took    his    natural    "sanctity,"    and 

199 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

carved  it,  as  a  dish  fit  for  the  gods,  until  it 
assumed  an  Apollonian  shape.  We  must  vis- 
ualize Nietzsche  not  only  as  the  Philosopher 
with  the  Hammer ;  but  as  the  Philosopher  with 
the  Chisel. 

We  must  visualize  him,  with  such  a  sculp- 
tor's tool,  standing  in  the  presence  of  the  cruci- 
fied figure  of  himself;  and  altering  one  by  one, 
its  natural  lineaments!  Nietzsche's  own 
lacerated  "intellectual  nerves"  were  the  van- 
tage-ground of  his  spiritual  vision.  He  could 
write  "the  Antichrist,"  because  he  had  "killed," 
in  his  own  nature,  "the  thing  he  loved."  It 
was  for  this  reason  that  he  had  such  a  super- 
natural insight  into  the  Christian  tempera- 
ment. It  w^as  for  this  reason  that  he  could 
pour  vitrol  upon  its  "little  secrets";  and  hunt 
it  to  its  last  retreats. 

Let  none  think  he  did  not  understand  the 
grandeur,  and  the  terrible  intoxicating  appeal, 
of  the  thing  he  fought.  He  understood  these 
only  too  well.  What  vibrating  sympathy — as 
for  a  kindred  spirit — may  be  read  betw^een  the 
lines  of  his  attack  on  Pascal — Pascal,  the  su- 
preme type  of  the  Christian  Philosopher ! 

It  must  be  further  realized — for  after  all 
what  are  words  and  phrases? — that  it  was 
really  nothing  but  the  "Christian  conscience" 
in  him  that  forced  him  on  so  desperately  to 
kick  against  the  pricks.  It  was  the  "Christian 
conscience"  in  him — has  he  not  himself  ana- 


200 


NIETZSCHE 

lysed  the  voluptuous  cruelty  of  that? — which 
drove  him  to  seek  something — if  possible — 
nobler,  austerer,  gayer,  more  innocently 
wicked,  than  Christianity! 

It  was  not  in  the  interests  of  Truth  that  he 
fought  it.  True  Christian,  as  he  was,  at  heart, 
he  never  cared  greatly  for  Truth  as  Truth.  It 
was  in  the  interest  of  a  Higher  Ideal,  a  more 
exacting,  less  human  Ideal,  that  he  crushed  it 
down.  The  Christian  spirit,  in  him  set  him 
upon  strangling  the  Christian  spirit — and  all 
in  the  interest  of  a  madness  of  nobility,  itself 
perforated  Vv'ith  Christian  conscience ! 

Was  Nietzsche  really  Greek,  compared  with 
— Goethe,  let  us  say?  Not  for  a  moment.  It 
was  in  the  desperation  of  his  attempt  to  be  so, 
that  he  seized  upon  Greek  tragedy  and  made 
it  dance  to  Christian  cymbals !  This  is,  let  it 
be  clearly  understood,  the  hidden  secret  of  his 
mania  for  Dionysus — Dionysus  gave  him  his 
opportunity.  In  the  worship  of  this  god — also 
a  wounded  god,  be  it  remarked; — he  was  able 
to  satisfy  his  perverted  craving  for  "ecstasy  of 
laceration"  under  the  shadow  of  another 
Name. 

But  after  all — as  Goethe  says — "feeling  is 
all  in  all ;  the  name  is  sound  and  smoke."  What 
he  felt  were  Christian  feelings,  the  feelings  of 
a  Mystic,  a  Visionary,  a  Flagellant.  What 
matter  by  what  name  you  call  them?  Christ? 
Dionysus?    It  is  the  secret  creative  passion  of 

201 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

the  human  heart  that  sends  them  Both  forth 
upon  their  warfaring. 

Is  any  one  simple  enough  to  think  that  what- 
ever Secret  Cosmic  Power  mehs  into  human 
ecstasy,  it  waits  to  be  summoned  by  certain 
particular  syllables?  That  this  arbitrary 
strangling  of  the  Christ  in  him  never  alto- 
gether ended,  is  proved  by  the  words  of  those 
tragic  messages  he  sent  to  Cosima  Wagner 
from  "the  aristocratic  city  of  Turin"  when  his 
tormented  brain  broke  like  a  taught  bow-string. 
Those  messages  resembled  arrows  of  fire,  shot 
into  space;  and  on  one  was  written  the  words 
"The  Crucified"  and  on  the  other  the  word 
"Dionysus." 

The  grand  and  heart-breaking  appeal  of  this 
lonely  Victim  of  his  own  merciless  scourge, 
does  not  depend,  for  its  effect  upon  us,  upon 
any  of  the  particular  "ideas"  he  announced. 
The  idea  of  the  "Eternal  Recurrence  of  all 
things" — to  take  the  most  terrible — is  clearly 
but  another  instance  of  his  intellectual  Sadism. 

The  worst  thing  that  could  happen  to  those 
innumerable  Victims  of  Life,  for  whom  he 
sought  to  kill  his  Pity,  was  that  they  should 
have  to  go  through  the  same  punishment  again 
— not  once  or  twice,  but  for  an  infinity  of 
times — and  it  was  just  that  that  he,  whose  im- 
mense Pity  for  them  took  so  long  a  killing,  sud- 
denly felt  must  be  what  had  to  happen — had  to 
happen  for  no  other  reason  than  that  it  was 

202 


NIETZSCHE 

intolerable  that  it  should  happen.  Again,  we 
may  note,  it  was  not  "Truth"  he  sought,  but 
ecstasy,  and,  in  this  case,  the  ecstasy  of  "ac- 
cepting" the  very  worst  kind  of  issue  he  could 
possibly  imagine. 

The  idea  of  the  Superman,  too,  is  an  idea 
that  could  only  have  entered  the  brain  of  one, 
pushed  on  to  think,  at  the  spear-head  of  his 
own  cruelty.  It  is  a  great  and  terrible  idea, 
sublime  and  devastating,  this  idea  of  the 
human  race  yielding  place  to  another  race, 
stronger,  wiser,  fairer,  sterner,  gayer,  and 
more  godlike !  Especially  noble  and  compelling 
is  Nietzsche's  constant  insistence  that  the  mo- 
ment has  come  for  men  to  take  their  Destiny 
out  of  the  blind  power  of  Evolution,  and  to 
guide  it  themselves,  with  a  strong  hand  and  a 
clear  will,  towards  a  definite  goal. 

The  fact  that  this  driving  force,  of  cruelty 
to  himself  and,  through  himself,  to  humanity, 
scourged  him  on  to  so  formidable  an  illumina- 
tion of  our  path,  is  a  proof  how  unwise  it  is 
to  suppress  any  grand  perversion.  Such  mo- 
tive-forces should  be  used,  as  Nietzsche  used 
his,  for  purposes  of  intellectual  insight — not 
simply  trampled  upon  as  "evil." 

Whether  our  poor  human  race  ever  will  sur- 
pass itself,  as  he  demands,  and  rise  to  some- 
thing psychologically  different,  "may  admit  a 
wide  solution."  It  is  not  an  unscientific  idea. 
It  is  not  an  irreligious  idea.     It  has  all  the 

203 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

dreams  of  the  Prophets  behind  it.  But — who 
can  tell  ?  It  is  quite  as  possible  that  the  spirit 
of  destruction  in  us  will  wantonly  ruin  this 
great  Chance  as  that  we  shall  seize  upon  it. 
Man  has  many  other  impulses  besides  the  im- 
pulse of  creation.  Perhaps  he  will  never  be 
seduced  into  even  desiring  such  a  goal,  far  less 
"willing"  it  over  long  spaces  of  time. 

The  curious  "optimism"  of  Nietzsche,  by 
means  of  which  he  sought  to  force  himself  into 
a  mood  of  such  Dionysian  ecstasy  as  to  be  able 
not  only  to  endure  Fate,  but  to  "love"  it,  is  yet 
another  example  of  the  subterranean  "con- 
science" of  Christianity  working  in  him.  In 
the  presence  of  such  a  mood,  and,  indeed,  in 
the  presence  of  nearly  all  his  great  dramatic 
Passions,  it  is  Nietzsche,  and  not  his  humorous 
critic,  who  is  "with  Our  Lord"  in  Gethsamene. 
One  does  not  drink  of  the  cup  of  Fate  "loving- 
ly"— without  bloody  sweat! 

The  interesting  thing  to  observe  about 
Nietzsche's  ideas  is  that  the  wider  they  depart 
from  what  was  essentially  Christian  in  him, 
the  less  convincing  they  grow.  One  cannot 
help  feeling  he  recognised  this  himself — and, 
infuriated  by  it,  strode  further  and  further  into 
the  Jungle. 

For  instance,  one  cannot  suppose  that  the 
cult  of  "the  Blonde  Beast,"  and  the  cult  of 
Caesar  Borgia,  were  anything  but  mad  re- 
prisals, directed  towards  himself,  in  savage  re- 

204 


NIETZSCHE 

venge;  blind  blows  struck  at  random  against 
the  lofty  and  penetrating  spirituality  in  which 
he  had  indulged  when  writing  Zarathustra. 

But  there  is  a  point  here  of  some  curious 
psychological  interest,  to  which  we  are  at- 
tracted by  a  certain  treacherous  red  glow  upon 
his  words  when  he  speaks  of  this  sultry, 
crouching,  spotted,  tail-lashing  mood.  Why  is 
it  precisely  this  Borgian  type,  this  Renais- 
sance type,  among  the  world's  various  Lust- 
Darlings  that  he  chooses  to  select? 

Why  does  he  not  oppose,  to  the  Christian 
Ideal,  its  true  opposite — the  naive,  artless, 
faun-like,  pagan  "child  of  Nature,"  who  has 
never  known  "remorse"  ? 

The  answer  is  clear.  He  chooses  the  Bor- 
gian type — the  type  which  is  not  free  from 
"superstition,"  which  is  always  wrestHng  with 
"superstition" — the  type  that  sprinkles  holy 
water  upon  its  dagger — because  such  a  type  is 
the  inevitable  product  of  the  presence  among 
us  of  the  Christian  Ideal.  The  Christian  Ideal 
has  made  a  certain  complication  of  "wicked- 
ness" possible,  which  were  impossible  without 
it. 

If  Nietzsche  had  not  been  obsessed  by 
Christianity  he  would  have  selected  as  his 
"Ideal  Blond  Beast"  that  perfectly  naive,  "un- 
fallen"  man,  of  imperturbable  nerves,  of  classic 
nerves,  such  as  Life  abounded  in  before  Christ 
came.     He  makes,  indeed,  a  pathetic  struggle 

205 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

to  idealize  this  type,  rather  than  the  ''con- 
science-striken" Renaissance  one.  He  lets  his 
fingers  stray  more  than  once  over  the  red- 
stained  limbs  of  real  sun-burnt  "Pompeian" 
heathenism.  He  turns  feverishly  the  wanton 
pages  of  Petronius  to  reach  this  unsullied,  ''im- 
perial" Animal.  But  he  cannot  reach  him.  He 
never  could  reach  him.  The  "consecrated" 
dagger  of  the  Borgia  gleams  and  scintillates 
between.  Even,  therefore,  in  the  sort  of 
"wickedness"  he  evokes,  Nietzsche  remains 
Christ-ridden  and  Christ-mastered.  The  mat- 
ter is  made  still  more  certain  when  one  steals 
up  silently,  so  to  speak,  behind  the  passages 
where  he  speaks  of  Napoleon. 

If  a  reader  has  the  remotest  psychological 
clairvoyance,  he  will  be  aware  of  a  certain 
strain  and  tug,  a  certain  mental  jerk  and  con- 
tortion, whenever  Napoleon  is  introduced. 

Yes,  he  could  engrave  that  fatal  "N"  over 
his  mantlepiece  at  Weimar — to  do  so  was  the 
last  solace  of  his  wounded  brain.  But  he  was 
never  really  at  ease  with  the  great  Emperor. 
Never  did  he — in  pure,  direct,  classic  recog- 
nition— greet  him  as  "the  Demonic  Master  of 
Destiny,"  with  the  Goethean  salutation!  Had 
Goethe  and  Napoleon,  in  their  notorious  en- 
counter, wherein  they  recognized  one  another 
as  "Men,"  been  interrupted  by  the  entrance 
of  Nietzsche,  do  you  suppose  they  would  not 
have  both  stiffened  and  recoiled,  recognizing 

206 


NIETZSCHE 

their  natural  Enemy,  the  Cross-bearer,  the 
Christ-obsessed  one,  "II  Santo"  ? 

The  difference  between  the  two  types  can 
best  be  felt  by  recalling  the  way  in  which  Na- 
poleon and  Goethe  treated  the  Christ-Legend, 
compared  with  Nietzsche's  desperate  wrestling. 

Napoleon  uses  ''Religion"  calmly  and  delib- 
erately for  his  High  Policy  and  Worldly  State- 
craft. 

Goethe  uses  ''Religion"  calmly  and  deliber- 
ately for  his  aesthetic  culture  and  his  mystic 
symbolism.  Neither  of  them  are,  for  one  mo- 
ment, touched  by  it  themselves. 

They  are  born  Pagans ;  and  when  this  noble, 
tortured  soul  flings  himself  at  their  feet  in 
feverish  worship,  one  feels  that,  out  of  their 
Homeric  Hades,  they  look  wonderingly,  unin- 
telligently,  at  him. 

One  of  the  most  laughable  things  in  the 
world  is  the  attempt  some  simple  critics  make 
to  turn  Nietzsche  into  an  ordinary  "Honest 
Infidel,"  a  kind  of  poetic  Bradlaugh-Ingersoll, 
offering  to  humanity  the  profound  discovery 
that  there  is  no  God,  and  that  when  we  die,  we 
die!  The  absurdity  is  made  complete  when 
this  naive,  revivified  "Pagan"  is  made  to  as- 
sure us — us,  "the  average  sensual  men" — that 
the  path  of  wisdom  lies,  not  in  resisting,  but  in 
yielding  to  temptation;  not  in  spiritual  wrest- 
ling to  "transform"  ourselves,  but  in  the  brute 

207 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

courage  ''to  be  ourselves,"  and  "live  out  our 
type" ! 

The  good  folk  who  play  with  such  a  childish 
illusion  would  do  well  to  scan  over  again  their 
"pagan"  hero's  branding  and  flaying  of  the 
philosopher  Strauss.  Strauss  was  precisely 
what  they  try  to  turn  Nietzsche  into — a  ran- 
corous, insensitive,  bullying,  materialistic  Hea- 
then, making  sport  of  "the  Cross"  and  drink- 
ing Laager  Beer.  Nietzsche  loathed  Laager 
Beer,  and  "the  Cross"  burnt  day  and  night  in 
his  tormented,  Dionysian  soul. 

It  occurs  to  me  sometimes  that  if  there  had 
been  no  "German  Reformation"  and  no  over- 
running of  the  world  by  vulgar  evangelical 
Protestantism,  it  would  be  still  possible  to 
bring  into  the  circle  of  the  Church's  develop- 
ment the  lofty  and  desperate  Passion  of  this 
"saintly"  Antichrist.  After  all,  why  should  we 
concede  that  those  agitated,  voluptuous,  secret 
devices  to  get  "saved,"  those  super-subtle,  sub- 
liminal tricks  of  the  weak  and  the  perverted  to 
be  revenged  on  the  beautiful  and  the  brave, 
which  Nietzsche  laments  were  ever  "bound  up" 
in  the  same  cover  as  the  "Old  Testament," 
must  remain  forever  the  dominant  "note"  in 
the  Faith  of  Christendom?  While  the  Suc- 
cessor of  Caesar,  while  the  Pontifex  Maximus 
of  our  "Spiritual  Rome,"  still  represents  the 
Infallible  Element  in  the  world's  nobler  religi- 
ous   Taste,    there   is   yet,    perhaps,    a    remote 

208 


NIETZSCHE 

chance  that  this  vulgarizing  of  "the  mountain 
summits,"  this  degrading  of  our  Planet's  Pas- 
sion-Play,  may  be  cauterized  and  eliminated. 

And  yet  it  is  not  likely!  Much  more  likely 
is  it  that  the  real  "secret"  of  Jesus,  together 
with  the  real  "secret"  of  Nietzsche — and  they 
do  not  differ  in  essence,  for  all  his  Borgias ! — 
will  remain  the  sweet  and  deadly  "fatalities" 
they  have  always  been — for  the  few,  the  few, 
the  few  w^ho  understand  them ! 

For  the  final  impression  one  carries  away, 
after  reading  Nietzsche,  is  the  impression  of 
"distinction,"  of  remoteness  from  "vulgar  bru- 
tality," from  "sensual  baseness,"  from  the 
clumsy  compromises  of  the  world.  It  may  not 
last,  this  Zarathustrian  mood.  It  lasts  with 
some  of  us  an  hour;  with  some  of  us  a  day — 
with  a  few  of  us  a  handful  of  years !  But  while 
it  lasts,  it  is  a  rare  and  high  experience.  As 
from  an  ice-bound  promontory  stretching  out 
over  the  absvmal  ^ulfs,  we  dare  to  look  Crea- 
tion  and  Annihilation,  for  once,  full  in  the  face. 

Liberated  from  our  own  lusts,  or  using  them, 
contemptuously  and  indifferently,  as  engines  of 
vision,  we  see  the  life  and  death  of  worlds,  the 
slow,  long-drawn,  moon-lit  wave  of  Universe- 
drowning  Nothingness. 

We  see  the  races  of  men,  falling,  rising, 
stumbling,  advancing  and  receding — and  we 
see  the  nezv  race — in  the  hours  of  the  "Great 
Noon-tide" — fulfilling  its  Prophet's  hope — and 

14  209 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

we  see  the  end  of  that  also!  And  seeing  all 
this,  because  the  air  of  our  watch-tower  is  so 
ice-cold  and  keen,  we  neither  tremble  or  blench. 
The  world  is  deep,  and  deep  is  pain,  and  deeper 
than  pain  is  joy.  We  have  seen  Creation,  and 
have  exulted  in  it.  We  have  seen  Destruction, 
and  have  exulted  in  it.  We  have  watched  the 
long,  quivering  Shadow  of  Life  shudder  across 
our  glacial  promontory,  and  we  have  watched 
that  drowning  tide  receive  it.  It  is  enough. 
It  is  well.  We  have  had  our  Vision.  We 
know  now  what  gives  to  the  gods  "that  look" 
their  faces  wear. 

It  now  only  remains  for  us  to  return  to  the 
familiar  human  Stage;  to  the  "Gala-Night, 
within  the  lonesome  latter  years,"  and  be  gay, 
and  "hard,"  and  "superficial" ! 

That  ice-bound  Promontory  into  the  Truth 
of  Things  has  only  known  one  Explorer  whose 
"Eloi,  Eloi  Lama  Sabacthani"  was  not  the 
death-cry  of  his  Pity.  And  that  Explorer — did 
we  only  dream  of  his  Return? 


210 


THOMAS  HARDY 


THOMAS  HARDY 

ITH  a  name  suggestive  of  the  purest 
English  origin,  Mr.  Hardy  has  be- 
come identified  with  that  portion  of 
England  where  the  various  race-de- 
posits in  our  national  ''strata"  are  most  clear 
and  defined.  In  Wessex,  the  traditions  of 
Saxon  and  Celt,  Norman  and  Dane,  Roman 
and  Iberian,  have  grown  side  by  side  into  the 
soil,  and  all  the  villages  and  towns,  all  the  hills 
and  streams,  of  this  country  have  preserved 
the  rumour  of  what  they  have  seen. 

In  Celtic  legend  the  country  of  the  West 
Saxons  is  marvellously  rich.  Camelot  and  the 
Island  of  Avalon  greet  one  another  across 
the  Somersetshire  vale.  And  Dorsetshire, 
Hardy's  immediate  home,  adds  the  Roman  tra- 
ditions of  Casterbridge  to  tragic  memories  of 
King  Lear.  Tribe  by  tribe,  race  by  race,  as 
they  come  and  go,  leaving  their  monuments 
and  their  names  behind,  Mr.  Hardy  broods 
over  them,  noting  their  survivals,  their  linger- 
ing footprints,  their  long  decline. 

In  his  well-loved  Dorchester  we  find  him 
pondering,  like  one  of  his  own  spirits  of  Pity 

213 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

and  Irony,  while  the  moonlight  shines  on  the 
haunted  amphitheatre  where  the  Romans  held 
their  games.  He  devotes  much  care  to  noting 
all  those  little  "omens  by  the  way"  that  make  a 
journey  along  the  great  highways  of  Wessex 
so  full  of  imaginative  suggestion. 

It  is  the  history  of  the  human  race  itself 
that  holds  him  with  a  mesmeric  spell,  as  cen- 
tury after  century  it  unrolls  its  acts  and  scenes, 
under  the  indifferent  stars.  The  continuity  of 
life!  The  long,  piteous  "ascent  of  man,"  from 
those  queer  fossils  in  the  Portland  Quarries — 
to  what  we  see  today,  so  palpable,  so  real! 
And  yet  for  all  his  tragic  pity,  Mr.  Hardy  is  a 
sly  and  whimsical  chronicler.  He  does  not  al- 
low one  point  of  the  little  jest  the  gods  play  on 
us — the  little  long-drawn-out  jest — to  lose  its 
sting.  With  something  of  a  goblin-like  alert- 
ness he  skips  here  and  there,  watching  those 
strange  scene  shifters  at  their  work.  The  dual 
stops  of  Mr.  Hardy's  country  pipe  are  cut 
from  the  same  reed.  With  the  one  he  chal- 
lenges the  Immortals  on  behalf  of  humanity; 
with  the  other  he  plays  such  a  shrewd  Priapian 
tune  that  all  the  Satyrs  dance. 

I  sometimes  think  that  only  those  born  and 
bred  in  the  country  can  do  justice  to  this  great 
writer.  That  dual  pipe  of  his  is  bewildering 
to  city  people.  They  over  emphasize  the  "mag- 
nanimity" of  his  art,  or  they  over  emphasize 
its  "miching-mallecho."    They  do  not  catch  the 

214 


THOMAS  HARDY 

secret  of  that  ming-led  strain.  The  same  type 
of  cultured  '"foreigner"  is  puzzled  by  Mr. 
Hardy's  self-possession.  He  ought  to  commit 
himself  more  completely,  or  he  ought  not  to 
have  committed  himself  at  all !  There  is  some- 
thing that  looks  to  them — so  they  are  tempted 
to  express  it — like  the  cloven  hoof  of  a  most 
Satyrish  cunning,  about  his  attitude  to  certain 
things.  That  little  caustic  by-play,  for  in- 
stance, with  which  he  girds  at  the  established 
order,  never  denouncing  it  wholesale  like  Shel- 
ley, or  accepting  it  wholesale  like  Wordsworth 
— and  always  with  a  tang,  a  dash  of  gall  and 
wormwood,  an  impish  malice. 

The  truth  is,  there  are  two  spirits  in  Mr. 
Hardy,  one  infinitely  sorrowful  and  tender,  the 
other  whimsical,  elfish  and  malign. 

The  first  spirit  rises  up  in  stern  Promethean 
revolt  against  the  decrees  of  Fate.  The  sec- 
ond spirit  deliberately  allies  itself  in  wanton, 
bitter  glee,  with  the  humorous  provocation  of 
humanity,  by  the  cruel  Powers  of  the  Air.  The 
psychology  of  all  this  is  not  hard  to  unravel. 
The  same  abnormal  sensitiveness  that  makes 
him  pity  the  victims  of  destiny  makes  him  also 
not  unaware  of  what  may  be  sweet  to  the  pal- 
ate of  the  gods  in  such  "merry  jests."  These 
two  tendencies  seem  to  have  grown  upon  him 
as  years  went  on  and  to  have  become  more 
and  more  pronounced.  Often,  with  artists,  the 
reverse  thing  happens.     Every  human  being 

215 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

has  his  own  secretive  reaction,  his  own  furtive 
recoil,  from  the  queer  trap  we  are  all  in, — his 
little  private  method  of  retaliation.  But  many 
writers  are  most  unscrupulously  themselves 
when  they  are  young.  The  changes  and 
chances  of  this  mortal  life  mellow  them  into  a 
more  neutral  tint.  Their  revenge  upon  life 
grows  less  personal  and  more  objective  as  they 
get  older.  They  become  balanced  and  re- 
signed. They  attain  "the  wisdom  of  Sopho- 
cles." 

The  opposite  of  this  has  been  the  history  of 
Mr.  Hardy's  progression.  He  began  with 
quite  harmless  rustic  realism,  fanciful  and 
quaint.  Then  came  his  masterpieces  wherein 
the  power  and  grandeur  of  a  great  artist's  in- 
spiration fused  everything  into  harmony.  At 
the  last,  in  his  third  period,  we  have  the  exag- 
geration of  all  that  is  most  personal  in  his  emo- 
tion intensified  to  the  extreme  limit. 

It  is  absurd  to  turn  away  from  these  books, 
books  like  Jude  the  Obscure  and  the  Well-Be- 
loved. If  Mr.  Hardy  had  not  had  such  sar- 
donic emotions,  such  desire  to  "hit  back"  at  the 
great  "opposeless  wills,"  and  such  Goblin-like 
glee  at  the  tricks  they  play  us,  he  would  never 
have  been  able  to  write  "Tess."  Against  the 
ways  of  God  to  this  sweet  girl  he  raises  a  hand 
of  terrible  revolt,  but  it  is  with  more  than  hu- 
man "pity"  that  he  lays  her  down  on  the  Altar 
of  Sacrifice. 


216 


THOMAS  HARDY 

But,  after  all,  it  is  in  the  supreme  passages  of 
pure  imaginative  grandeur  that  Mr.  Hardy  is 
greatest.  Here  he  is  "with  Shakespeare,"  and 
we  forget  both  Titan  and  Goblin.  How  hard 
it  is  exactly  to  put  into  words  what  this  "imag- 
inative grandeur"  consists  of!  It  is,  at  any 
rate,  an  intensification  of  our  general  con- 
sciousness of  the  Life-Drama  as  a  whole,  but 
this,  tmder  a  poetic,  rather  than  a  scientific, 
light,  and  yet  with  the  scientific  facts, — they 
also  not  without  their  dramatic  significance — 
indicated  and  allowed  for.  It  is  a  clarifying  of 
our  mental  vision  and  a  heightening  of  our 
sensual  apprehension.  It  is  a  certain  with- 
drawing from  the  mere  personal  pull  of  our 
own  fate  into  a  more  rarified  air,  where  the 
tragic  beauty  of  life  falls  into  perspective,  and, 
beholding  the  world  in  a  clear  mirror,  we  es- 
cape for  a  moment  from  "the  will  to  live." 

At  such  times  it  is  as  though,  "taken  up  upon 
a  high  mountain,  we  see,  without  desire  and 
without  despair,  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and 
the  glories  of  them."  Then  it  is  that  we  feel 
the  very  wind  of  the  earth's  revolution,  and  the 
circling  hours  touch  us  with  a  palpable  hand. 

And  the  turmoil  of  the  world  grown  so  dis- 
tant, it  is  then  that  we  feel  at  once  the  great- 
ness of  humanity  and  the  littleness  of  what  it 
strives  for.  We  are  seized  with  a  shuddering 
tenderness  for  Man.     This  bewildered  animal 


217 


i 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

— wrestling  in  darkness   with  he  knows   not 
what. 

And  gazing  long  and  long  into  this  mirror, 
the  poignancy  of  what  we  behold  is  strangely 
softened.  After  all,  it  is  something,  whatever 
becomes  of  us,  to  have  been  conscious  of  all 
this.  It  is  something  to  have  outwatched  Arc- 
turus,  and  felt  "the  sweet  influences"  of  the 
Pleiades.  Congruous  with  such  a  mood  is  the 
manner  in  which,  while  Mr.  Hardy  opposes 
himself  to  Christianity,  he  cannot  forget  it. 
He  cannot  "cleanse  the  stuff'd  bosom  of  that 
perilous  stuff  which  weighs  upon  the  heart." 
It  troubles  and  vexes  him.  It  haunts  him. 
And  his  work  both  gains  and  suffers.  He 
flings  gibe  after  gibe  at  "God,"  but  across  his 
anger  falls  the  shadow  of  the  Cross.  How 
should  it  not  be  so?  "All  may  be  permitted," 
but  one  must  not  add  a  feather's  weight  to  the 
wheel  that  breaks  our  "little  ones." 

It  is  this  that  separates  Mr.  Hardy's  work 
from  so  much  modern  fiction  that  is  clever  and 
"philosophical"  but  does  not  satisfy  one's 
imagination.  All  things  with  Mr.  Hardy — 
even  the  facts  of  geology  and  chemistry — are 
treated  with  that  imaginative  clairvoyance  that 
gives  them  their  place  in  the  human  comedy. 
And  is  not  Christianity  itself  one  of  these 
facts?  How  amazing  that  such  a  thing  should 
have  appeared  at  all  upon  the  earth!  When 
one  reads  Meredith,  with  his  brilliant  intellec- 

218 


THOMAS  HARDY 

tual  cleverness,  one  finds  Christianity  "taken 
for  granted,"  and  dismissed  as  hardly  relevant 
to  modern  topics. 

But  Mr.  Hardy  is  too  pagan,  in  the  true 
sense,  too  fascinated  by  the  poetry  of  life  and 
the  essential  ritual  of  life,  to  dismiss  any  great 
religion  in  this  way.  The  thing  is  always  with 
him,  just  as  the  Gothic  Tower  of  St.  Peter's 
Church  in  Casterbridge  is  always  with  him. 
He  may  burst  into  impish  fury  with  its  doc- 
trines, but,  like  one  of  those  queer  demons  who 
peep  out  from  such  consecrated  places,  yet 
never  leave  them,  his  imagination  requires 
that  atmosphere.  For  the  same  reason,  in 
spite  of  his  intellectual  realization  of  the  me- 
chanical processes  of  Fate,  their  engine-like 
dumbness  and  blindness,  he  is  always  being 
driven  to  personify  these  ultimate  powers;  to 
personify  them,  or  it,  as  something  that  takes 
infernal  satisfaction  in  fooling  its  luckless 
creations;  in  provoking  them  and  scourging 
them  to  madness. 

Mr.  Hardy's  ultimate  thought  is  that  the 
universe  is  blind  and  unconscious;  that  it 
knows  not  what  it  does.  But,  standing  among 
the  graves  of  those  Wessex  churchyards,  or 
watching  the  twisted  threads  of  perverse  des- 
tiny that  plague  those  hapless  hearts  under  a 
thousand  village  roofs,  it  is  impossible  for  him 
not  to  long  to  "strike  back"  at  this  damned 
System  of  Things  that  alone  is  responsible. 

219 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

And  how  can  one  "strike  back"  unless  one  con- 
verts unconscious  machinery  into  a  wanton 
Providence?  Where  Mr.  Hardy  is  so  incom- 
parably greater  than  Meredith  and  all  his  mod- 
ern followers  is  that  in  these  Wessex  novels 
there  is  none  of  that  intolerable  "ethical  dis- 
cussion" which  obscures  "the  old  essential  can- 
dours" of  the  human  situation. 

The  reaction  of  men  and  women  upon  one 
another,  in  the  presence  of  the  solemn  and  the 
mocking  elements;  this  will  outlast  all  social 
readjustments  and  all  ethical  reforms. 

While  the  sun  shines  and  the  moon  draws 
the  tides,  men  and  women  will  ache  from  jeal- 
ousy, and  the  lover  will  not  be  the  beloved  I 
Long  after  a  quite  new  set  of  "interesting  mod- 
ern ideas"  have  replaced  the  present,  children 
will  break  the  hearts  of  their  parents,  and  par- 
ents will  break  the  hearts  of  their  children. 
Mr.  Hardy  is  indignant  enough  over  the  ridic- 
ulous conventions  of  Society,  but  he  knows 
that,  at  the  bottom,  what  we  suffer  from  is  "the 
dust  out  of  which  we  are  made;"  the  eternal 
illusion  and  disillusion  which  must  drive  us  on 
and  "take  us  off"  until  the  planet's  last  hour. 

Mr.  Hardy's  style,  at  its  best,  has  an  imagi- 
native suggestiveness  which  approaches, 
though  it  may  not  quite  reach,  the  indescrib- 
able touch  of  the  Shakespearean  tragedies. 
There  is  also  a  quality  in  it  peculiar  to  himself 
— threatening  and  silencing ;  a  thunderous  sup- 

220 


THOMAS  HARDY 

pression,  a  formidable  reserve,  an  iron  tenac- 
ity. Sometimes,  again,  one  is  reminded  of  the 
ancient  Roman  poets,  and  not  unfrequently, 
too,  of  the  rhymmic  incantations  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  that  majestic  and  perverted 
Latinist. 

The  description,  for  instance,  of  Egdon 
Heath,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Return  of  the 
Native,  has  a  dusky  architectural  grandeur 
that  is  like  the  Portico  of  an  Egyptian  Temple. 
The  same  thing  may  be  noted  of  that  sudden 
apparition  of  Stonehenge,  as  Tess  and  Angel 
stumble  upon  it  in  their  flight  through  the 
darkness. 

One  thinks  of  the  words  of  William  Blake: 
"He  who  does  not  love  Form  more  than  Colour 
is  a  coward."  For  it  is,  above  all.  Form  that 
appeals  to  Mr.  Hardy.  The  iron  plough  of  his 
implacable  style  drives  pitilessly  through  the 
soft  flesh  of  the  earth  until  it  reaches  the  archi- 
tectural sub-structure.  Whoever  tries  to  vis- 
ualize any  scene  out  of  the  Wessex  Novels  will 
be  forced  to  see  the  figures  of  the  persons  con- 
cerned "silhouetted"  against  a  formidable  sky- 
line. One  sees  them,  these  poor  impassioned 
ones,  moving  in  tragic  procession  along  the 
edge  of  the  world,  and,  when  the  procession  is 
over,  darkness  re-establishes  itself.  The  qual- 
ity that  makes  Mr.  Hardy's  manner  such  a 
refusfe  from  the  levities  and  s^ravities  of  the 
"reforming  w^riters"  is  a  quality  that  springs 

221 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

from  the  soil.  The  soil  has  a  gift  of  "propor- 
tion" like  nothing  else.  Things  fall  into  due 
perspective  on  Egdon  Heath,  and  among  the 
water-meadows  of  Blackmoor  life  is  felt  as  the 
tribes  of  men  have  felt  it  since  the  beginning. 

The  modern  tendency  is  to  mock  at  sexual 
passion  and  grow  grave  over  social  and  artis- 
tic problems.  Mr.  Hardy  eliminates  social  and 
artistic  problems  and  "takes  nothing  seriously" 
— not  even  "God" — except  the  love  and  the 
hate  of  men  and  women,  and  the  natural  ele- 
ments that  are  their  accomplices.  It  is  for  this 
lack  in  them,  this  uneasy  levity  over  the  one 
thing  that  really  counts,  that  it  is  so  hard  to 
read  many  humorous  and  arresting  modern 
writers,  except  in  railway  trains  and  cafes. 
They  have  thought  it  clever  to  dispossess  the 
passion  of  our  poor  heart  of  its  essential  poetry. 
Thev  have  not  understood  that  man  would 
sooner  suffer  the  bitterness  of  death  than  be 
deprived  of  his  right  to  suffer  the  bitterness  of 
love. 

It  must  be,  I  suppose,  that  these  flippant 
triflers  are  so  optimistic  about  their  reforms 
and  their  ethical  ideals  and  their  sanitary 
projects  that  to  them  such  things  as  how  the 
sun  rises  over  Shaston  and  sinks  over  Bud- 
mouth  ;  such  things  as  what  Eustacia  felt  when 
she  walked,  "talking  to  herself,"  across  the 
blasted  heath ;  such  things  as  the  mood  of  Hen- 
chard  when  he  cursed  the  day  of  his  birth,  are 

222 


THOMAS  HARDY 

mere  accidents  and  irrelevancies,  by  no  means 
germane  to  the  matter. 

Well,  perhaps  they  are  wise  to  be  so  hope- 
ful. But  for  the  rest  of  us,  for  whom  the 
world  does  not  seem  likely  to  "improve"  so 
fast,  it  is  an  unspeakable  relief  that  there 
should  be  at  least  one  writer  left  interested  in 
the  things  that  interested  Sophocles  and  Shake- 
speare, and  possessed  of  a  style  that  does  not, 
remembering  the  work  of  such  hands,  put  our 
generation  altogether  to  shame. 


223 


WALTER  PATER 


15 


WALTER  PATER 

HAT  are  the  qualities  that  make  this 
shy  and  furtive  Recluse,  this  Wan- 
derer in  the  shadow,  the  greatest  of 
critics?  Imagination,  in  the  first 
place,  and  then  that  rare,  unusual,  divine  gift 
of  limitless  Reverence  for  the  Human  Senses. 
Imagination  has  a  two-fold  power.  It  visual- 
izes and  it  creates.  With  clairvoyant  ubiquity 
it  floats  and  flows  into  the  most  recondite  re- 
cesses, the  most  reluctant  sanctuaries,  of  other 
men's  souls.  With  clear-cut,  architectural 
volition  it  builds  up  its  own  Byzantium,  out  of 
the  quarried  debris  of  all  the  centuries. 

One  loves  to  think  of  Pater  leaving  that  Ol- 
ney  country,  where  he  "hated"  to  hear  any- 
thing more  about  "the  Poet  Cowper,"  and 
nursing  his  weird  boy-fancies  in  the  security  of 
the  Canterbury  cloisters.  The  most  passionate 
and  dedicated  spirit  he — to  sulk,  and  dream, 
and  hide,  and  love,  and  "watch  the  others  play- 
ing," in  that  quiet  retreat — since  the  great  soul 
of  Christopher  Marlowe  flamed  up  there  into 
consciousness ! 

And  then  Oxford.    And  it  is  meet  and  right, 

227 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

at  such  a  point  as  this,  to  lay  our  offering,  mod- 
est, secret,  shy — a  shadow,  a  nothing — at  the 
feet  of  this  gracious  Ahua  Mater;  "who  needs 
not  June  for  Beauty's  heightening!"  One  re- 
voUs  against  her  sometimes.  The  charm  is  too 
exclusive,  too  withdrawn.  And  something — 
what  shall  I  say? — of  ironic,  supercilious  dis- 
illusion makes  her  forehead  weary,  and  her 
eyelids  heavy.  But  after  all,  to  what  exquisite 
children,  like  rare,  exotic  flowers,  she  has  the 
power  to  give  birth!  But  did  you  know,  you 
for  whom  the  syllables  "Oxford"  are  an  Incan- 
tation, that  to  the  yet  more  subtle,  yet  more 
withdrawn,  and  yet  more  elaborate  soul  of 
Walter  Pater,  Oxford  Herself  appeared,  as 
time  went  on,  a  little  vulgar  and  silly? 

Indeed,  he  fled  from  her,  and  took  refuge — 
sometimes  with  his  sisters,  for,  like  Charles 
Lamb,  Pater  was  "Conventual"  in  his  taste — 
and  sometimes  with  the  "original"  of  Marius 
the  Epicurean.  But  what  matter  where  he  fled 
— he  who  always  followed  the  "shady  side"  of 
the  road?  He  has  not  only  managed  to  escape, 
himself,  with  all  his  "Boxes  of  Alabaster,"  into 
the  sanctuary  of  the  Ivory  Tower,  that  even 
Oxford  cannot  reach,  but  he  has  carried  us 
thither  with  him. 

And  there,  from  the  opal-clouded  windows 
of  that  high  place,  he  shows  us  still  the  secret 
kingdoms  of  art  and  philosophy  and  life,  and 
the  remotest  o-jories  of  them.     We  see  them 


228 


WALTER  PATER 

all — from  those  windows — a  little  lovelier,  a 
little  rarer,  a  little  more  ''selective,"  than,  per- 
chance, they  really  are.  But  what  matter? 
What  does  one  expect  when  one  looks  through 
opal-clouded  windows?  And,  after  all,  those 
are  the  kinds  of  windows  from  which  it  is  best 
to  look  at  the  dazzling  limbs  of  the  immortal 
gods ! 

Not  but  what,  sometimes,  he  permits  us  to 
throw  those  "magic  casements"  wide  open. 
And  then,  in  how  lucid  an  air,  in  how  clean 
and  fresh  a  morning  of  reality,  those  pure 
forms  and  godlike  figures  stand  out,  their 
naked  feet  in  the  cold,  clear  dew ! 

For  one  must  note  two  things  about  Walter 
Pater.  He  is  able  to  throw  the  glimmering 
mantle  of  his  own  elaborate  sopJiistry  of  the 
senses  over  comparatively  fleeting,  unarresting 
objects.  And  he  is  able  to  compel  us  to  follow, 
line  by  line,  curve  by  curve,  contour  by  contour, 
the  very  palpable  body  and  presence  of  the 
Beauty  that  passeth  not  away. 

In  plainer  words,  he  is  a  great  and  exact 
scholar — laborious,  patient,  indefatigable,  re- 
served ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  Protean  Wiz- 
ard, breathing  forbidden  life  into  the  Tyrian- 
stained  writhings  of  many  an  enchanted 
Lamia!  At  a  thousand  points  he  is  the  only 
modern  literary  figure  who  draws  us  towards 
him  with  the  old  Leonardoian,  Goethean  spell 
For,  like  Goethe  and  Da  Vinci,  he  is  never  far 

229 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

from  those  eternal  "Partings  of  the  Ways," 
which  alone  make  life  interesting. 

He  is,  for  instance,  more  profoundly- 
drenched,  dyed,  and  endued  in  "Christian  My- 
thology" than  any  mortal  writer,  short  of  the 
Saints  themselves.  He  is  more  native  to  the 
pure  Hellenic  air  than  any  since  Walter  Sav- 
age Landor.  And  he  is  more  subtle,  in  his  un- 
derstanding of  "German  Philosophy"  as  op- 
posed to  "Celtic  Romance,"  than  all — outside 
the  most  inner  circles — since  Hegel — or  Heine ! 
The  greedy,  capricious  "Uranian  Babyishness" 
of  his  pupil  Oscar,  with  its  peevish  clutching 
at  all  soft  and  provocative  and  glimmering 
things,  is  mere  child's  play,  compared  with  the 
deep,  dark  Vampirism  with  which  this  furtive 
Hermit  drains  the  scarlet  blood  of  the  Vestals 
of  every  Sanctuary. 

How  little  the  conventional  critics  have  un- 
derstood this  master  of  their  own  craft !  What 
hopeless  people  have  "rushed  in"  to  interpret 
this  super-subtle  Interpreter!  Mr.  Gosse  has, 
however,  done  one  thing  for  us.  Somewhere, 
somehow,  he  once  drew  a  picture  of  Walter 
Pater  "gambolling,"  in  the  moonlight,  on  the 
velvet  lawn  of  his  own  secluded  Oxford  gar- 
den, like  a  satin-pawed  Wombat!  I  always 
think  of  that  picture.  It  is  a  pleasanter  one 
than  that  of  Mark  Pattison,  running  round  his 
Gooseberry  bushes,  after  great  screaming 
girls.     But  they  are  both  touching  sketches, 

230 


WALTER  PATER 

and,  no  doubt,  very  indicative  of  Life  beneath 
the  shadow  of  the  Bodleian. 

Why  have  the  professional  philosophers — 
ever  since  that  Master  of  Baliol  who  used  to 
spend  his  time  boring  holes  in  the  Ship  that 
carried  him — "fought  shy"  of  Pater's  Philos- 
ophy ?  For  a  sufficient  reason !  Because,  like 
Protagoras  the  Sophist,  and  like  Aristippus 
the  Cyrenean,  he  has  undermined  Metaphysic, 
hy  means  of  Metaphysic. 

For  Walter  Pater — is  that  clearly  under- 
stood?— was  an  adept,  long  before  Nietzsche's 
campaign  began,  at  showing  the  human  desire, 
the  human  craving,  the  human  ferocity,  the 
human  spite,  hidden  behind  the  mask  of  "Pure 
Reason." 

He  treats  every  great  System  of  Metaphysic 
as  a  great  work  of  Art — with  a  very  human, 
often  a  too  human,  artizan  behind  it — a  work 
of  Art  which  we  have  a  perfect  right  to  ap- 
propriate, to  enjoy,  to  look  at  the  world 
through,  and  then  to  pass  on! 

Every  Philosophy  has  its  "secret,"  accord- 
ing to  Pater,  its  "formula,"  its  lost  Atlantis. 
Well!  It  is  for  us  to  search  it  out;  to  take 
colour  from  its  dim-lit  under-world;  to  feed 
upon  its  wavering  Sea-Lotus — and  then,  re- 
turning to  the  surface,  to  swim  away,  in  search 
of  other  diving-grounds ! 

No  Philosopher  except  Pater  has  dared  to 
carry  Esoteric  Eclecticism  quite  as  far  as  this. 

231 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

And,  be  it  understood,  he  is  no  frivolous  Dilet- 
tante. This  draining  the  secret  wine  of  the 
great  embalmed  Sarcophagi  of  Thought  is  his 
Life-Lure,  his  secret  madness,  his  grand  ob- 
session. Walter  Pater  approaches  a  System 
of  Metaphysical  Thought  as  a  somewhat  fur- 
tive amorist  might  approach  a  sleeping  Nymph. 
On  light-stepping,  crafty  feet  he  approaches — 
and  the  hand  with  which  he  twitches  the  sleeve 
of  the  sleeper  is  as  soft  as  the  flutter  of  a  moth's 
wing.  "I  do  not  like,"  he  said  once,  "to  be 
called  a  Hedonist.  It  gives  such  a  queer  im- 
pression to  people  who  don't  know  Greek." 

Ardent  young  people  sometimes  come  to  me, 
when  in  the  wayfaring  of  my  patient  academic 
duties,  I  speak  about  Pater,  and  ask  me  point- 
blank  to  tell  them  what  his  "view-point" — so 
they  are  pleased  to  express  it — "really  and 
truly"  was.  Sw^eet  reader,  do  you  know  the 
pain  of  these  "really  and  truly"  questions?  I 
try  to  answer  in  some  blundering  manner  like 
this.  I  try  to  explain  how,  for  him,  nothing 
in  this  world  was  certain  or  fixed;  how  every- 
thing "flowed  away" ;  how^  all  that  we  touch  or 
taste  or  see,  vanished,  changed  its  nature,  be- 
came something  else,  even  as  we  vanish,  as 
the  years  go  on,  and  change  our  nature  and  be- 
come something  else.  I  try  to  explain  how,  for 
him.  we  are  ourselves  but  the  meeting-places 
of  strange  forces,  journeying  at  large  and  by 
chance  through  a  shifting  world;  how  we,  too, 

232 


WALTER  PATER 

these  very  meeting-places  of  such  forces,  waver 
and  flicker  and  shift  and  are  transformed,  Hke 
dreams  within  dreams! 

I  try  to  explain  how,  this  being  so,  and  noth- 
ing being  ''written  in  the  sky,"  it  is  our  right 
to  test  every  single  experience  that  life  can 
offer,  short  of  those  which  would  make  things 
bitterer,  harder,  narrower,  less  easy,  for  "the 
other  person." 

And  if  my  Innocents  ask — as  they  do  some- 
times— Innocents  are  like  that! — "Why  must 
we  consider  the  other  person?"  I  answer — for 
no  reason,  and  under  no  threat  or  danger  or 
categorical  imperative;  but  simply  because  we 
have  grown  to  be  the  sort  of  animal,  the  sort 
of  queer  fish,  who  cannot  do  the  things  "that 
he  would" !  It  is  not,  I  try  to  indicate,  a  case 
of  conscience;  it  is  a  matter  of  taste;  and  there 
are  certain  things,  when  it  comes  to  that  point, 
which  an  animal  possessed  of  such  taste  cannot 
do,  even  though  he  desire  to  do  them.  And 
one  of  these  things  is  to  hurt  the  other  trapped 
creatures  who  happen  to  have  been  caught  in 
the  same  "gin"  as  ourself. 

With  regard  to  Art  and  Literature,  Pater 
has  the  same  method  as  with  regard  to  Philos- 
ophy. Everything  in  a  world  so  fluid  is  ob- 
viously relative.  It  is  ridiculous  to  dream  that 
there  is  any  absolute  standard — even  of  beauty 
itself.  Those  high  and  immutable  Principles 
of  The  Good  and  True  are  as  much  an  illusion 


233 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

as  any  other  human  dream.  There  are  no  such 
principles.  Beauty  is  a  Daughter  of  Life,  and 
is  forever  changing  as  Life  changes,  and  as  we 
change  who  have  to  Hve.  The  lonely,  tragic 
faith  of  certain  great  souls  in  that  high,  cold 
"Mathematic"  of  the  Universe,  the  rhythm  of 
whose  ordered  Harmony  is  the  Music  of  the 
Spheres,  is  a  Faith  that  may  well  inspire  and 
solemnize  us;  it  cannot  persuade  or  convince 
us. 

Beauty  is  not  Mathematical;  it  is — if  one 
may  say  so — physiological  and  psychological, 
and  though  that  austere  severity  of  pure  line 
and  pure  color,  the  impersonal  technique  of 
art,  has  a  seemingly  pre-ordained  power  of 
appeal,  in  reality  it  is  far  less  immutable  than 
it  appears,  and  has  far  more  in  it  of  the  arbi- 
trariness of  life  and  growth  and  change  than 
we  sometimes  would  care  to  allow. 

Walter  Pater's  magnetic  spell  is  never  more 
wonder-working  than  when  he  deals  with  the 
materials  which  artists  use.  And  most  of  all, 
with  words,  that  material  which  is  so  stained 
and  corrupted  and  outraged — and  yet  which  is 
the  richest  of  all.  But  how  tenderly  he  always 
speaks  of  materials!  What  a  limitless  rever- 
ence he  has  for  the  subtle  reciprocity  and  corre- 
spondence between  the  human  senses  and  what 
— so  thrillingly,  so  dangerously,  sometimes! — ■ 
they  apprehend.  Wood  and  clay  and  marble 
and  bronze  and  gold  and  silver ;  these — and  the 

234 


WALTER  PATER 

fabrics  of  cunning  looms  and  deft,  insatiable 
fingers — he  handles  with  the  reverence  of  a 
priest  touching  consecrated  elements. 

Not  only  the  great  main  rivers  of  art's  tra- 
dition, but  the  little  streams  and  tributaries, 
he  loves.  Perhaps  he  loves  some  of  these  best 
of  all,  for  the  pathways  to  their  exquisite  mar- 
gins are  less  trodden  than  the  others,  and  one 
is  more  apt  to  find  one's  self  alone  there. 

Perhaps  of  all  his  essays,  three  might  be  se- 
lected as  most  characteristic  of  certain  recur- 
rent moods.  That  one  on  Denys  L'Auxerrois, 
where  the  sweet,  perilous  legend  of  the  exiled 
god — has  he  really  been  ever  far  from  us,  that 
treacherous  Son  of  scorched  white  Flesh? — ■ 
leads  us  so  far,  so  strangely  far.  That  one  on 
Watteau,  the  Prince  of  Court  Painters,  where 
his  passion  for  things  faded  and  withdrawn 
reaches  its  climax.  For  Pater,  like  Antoine,  is 
one  of  those  always  ready  to  turn  a  little  wear- 
ily from  the  pressure  of  their  own  too  vivid 
days,  and  seek  a  wistful  escape  in  some  fan- 
tastic valley  of  dreams.  Watteau's  "happy 
valley"  is,  indeed,  sadder  than  our  most 
crowded  hours — how  should  it  not  be,  when  it 
is  no  "valley"  at  all,  but  the  melancholy  cy- 
press-alleys of  Versailles? — but,  though  sad- 
der, it  is  so  fine ;  so  fine  and  rare  and  gay ! 

And  along  the  borders  of  it  and  under  its 
clipped  trees,  by  its  fountains  and  ghostly 
lawns,  still,  still  can  one  catch  in  the  twilight 

235 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

the  shimmer  of  the  dancing  feet  of  the  Phan- 
tom-Pierrot, and  the  despair  in  his  smile !  For 
him,  too — for  Gilles  the  Mummer — as  for  An- 
toine  Watteau  and  Walter  Pater,  the  wistful- 
ness  of  such  places  is  not  inconsistent  with  their 
levity.  Soon  the  music  must  stop.  Soon  it 
must  be  only  a  garden,  "only  a  garden  of  Le- 
notre,  correct,  ridiculous  and  charming."  For 
the  lips  of  the  Despair  of  Pierrot  cannot  always 
touch  the  lips  of  the  Mockery  of  Columbine; 
in  the  end,  the  Ultimate  Futility  must  turn 
them  both  to  stone! 

And,  finally,  that  Essay  upon  Leonardo, 
with  the  lines  "we  say  to  our  friend,"  about 
Her  who  is  "older  than  the  rocks  on  which 
she  sits." 

What  really  makes  Pater  so  great,  so  wise, 
so  salutary  a  writer  is  his  perpetual  insistence 
on  the  criminal,  mad  foolishness  of  letting  slip, 
in  silly  chatter  and  vapid  preaching,  the  unre- 
turning  days  of  our  youth !  "Carry,  O  Youths 
and  Maidens,"  he  seems  to  say.  "Carry  with 
infinite  devotion  that  vase  of  many  odours 
which  is  your  Life  on  Earth.  Spill  as  little  as 
may  be  of  its  unvalued  wine ;  let  no  rain-drops 
or  bryony-dew,  or  floating  gossamer-seed,  fall 
into  it  and  spoil  its  taste.  For  it  is  all  you  have, 
and  it  cannot  last  long! 

He  is  a  great  writer,  because  from  him  we 
may  learn  the  difficult  and  subtle  art  of  drink- 
ing the  cup  of  life  so  as  to  taste  every  drop. 

236 


WALTER  PATER 

One  could  expatiate  long  upon  his  attitude  to 
Christianity — his  final  desire  to  be  "ordained 
Priest" — his  alternating  pieties  and  incredul- 
ities. His  deliberate  clinging  to  what  "experi- 
ence" brought  him,  as  the  final  test  of  "truth," 
made  it  quite  easy  for  him  to  dip  his  arms  deep 
into  the  Holy  Well.  He  might  not  find  the 
Graal ;  he  might  see  nothing  there  but  his  own 
shadow!  What  matter?  The  Well  itself  was 
so  cool  and  chaste  and  dark  and  cavern-like, 
that  it  was  worth  long  summer  days  spent 
dreaming  over  it — dreaming  over  it  in  the 
cloistered  garden,  out  of  the  dust  and  the  folly 
and  the  grossness  of  the  brutal  World,  that 
knows  neither  Apollo  or  Christ! 


257 


DOSTOIEVSKY 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

HE  first  discovery  of  Dostoievsky  is, 
for  a  spiritual  adventurer,  such  a 
shock  as  is  not  hkely  to  occur  again. 
One  is  staggered,  bewildered,  in- 
sulted. It  is  like  a  hit  in  the  face,  at  the  end  of 
a  dark  passage;  a  hit  in  the  face,  followed  by 
the  fumbling  of  strange  hands  at  one's  throat. 
Everything  that  has  been  forbidden,  by  dis- 
cretion, by  caution,  by  self-respect,  by  atavis- 
tic inhibition,  seems  suddenly  to  leap  up  out  of 
the  darkness  and  seize  upon  one  with  fierce,  in- 
describable caresses. 

All  that  one  has  felt,  but  has  not  dared  to 
think;  all  that  one  has  thought,  but  has  not 
dared  to  say ;  all  the  terrible  whispers  from  the 
unspeakable  margins;  all  the  horrible  wreck- 
age and  silt  from  the  unsounded  depths,  float 
in  upon  us  and  overpower  us. 

There  is  so  much  that  the  other  writers, 
even  the  realists  among  them,  cannot,  will  not, 
say.  There  is  so  much  that  the  normal  self- 
preservative  instincts  in  ourselves  do  not  zvant 
said.  But  this  Russian  has  no  mercy.  Such 
exposures    humiliate    and    disgrace?      What 

16  241 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

matter?  It  is  well  that  we  should  be  so  laid 
bare.  Such  revelations  provoke  and  embar- 
rass ?  What  matter  ?  We  require  embarrass- 
ment. The  quicksilver  of  human  consciousness 
must  have  no  closed  chinks,  no  blind  alleys.  It 
must  be  compelled  to  reform  its  microcosmic 
reflections,  even  down  there,  where  it  has  to  be 
driven  by  force.  It  is  extraordinary  how 
superficial  even  the  great  writers  are;  how 
lacking  in  the  Mole's  claws,  in  the  Wood- 
pecker's beak!  They  seem  labouring  beneath 
some  pathetic  vow,  exacted  by  the  Demons  of 
our  Fate,  under  terrible  threats,  only  to  reveal 
what  will  serve  their  purpose!  This  applies 
as  much  to  the  Realists,  with  their  traditional 
animal  chemistry,  as  to  the  Idealists,  with  their 
traditional  ethical  dynamics.  It  applies,  above 
all,  to  the  interpreters  of  Sex,  who,  in  their 
conventional  grossness,  as  well  as  in  their  con- 
ventional discretion,  bury  such  Ostrich  heads 
in  the  sand ! 

The  lucky-unlucky  individual  whose  path 
this  formidable  writer  crosses,  quickly  begins, 
as  he  reads  page  by  page,  to  cry  out  in  startled 
wonder,  in  terrified  protest.  This  rending 
Night  Hawk  reveals  just  what  one  hugged 
most  closely  of  all — just  what  one  did  not  con- 
fess! Such  a  person,  reading  this  desperate 
"clairvoyant,"  finds  himself  laughing  and 
chuckling,  under  his  breath,  and  against  his 
will,  over  the  little  things  there  betrayed.     It 


242 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

is  not  any  more  a  case  of  enjoying  with  distant 
aesthetic  amusement  the  general  human  spec- 
tacle. He  himself  is  the  one  scratched  and 
pricked.  He  himself  is  the  one  so  abominably 
tickled.  That  is  why  women — who  have  so 
mad  a  craving  for  the  personal  in  everything 
■ — are  especially  caught  by  Dostoievsky.  He 
knows  them  so  fatally  well.  Those  startling, 
contradictory  feelings  that  make  their  capric- 
ious bosoms  rise  and  fall,  those  feelings  that 
they  find  so  difficult  themselves  to  understand, 
he  drags  them  all  into  the  light.  The  kind  of 
delicate  cruelty,  that  in  others  becomes  some- 
thing worse,  refines  itself  in  his  magnetic  gen- 
ius into  a  cruelty  of  insight  that  knows  no 
scruple.  Nor  is  the  reluctance  of  these  gentle 
beings,  so  thrillingly  betrayed,  to  yield  their 
passionate  secrets,  unaccompanied  by  pleasure. 
They  suffer  to  feel  themselves  so  exposed,  but 
it  is  an  exquisite  suffering.  It  may,  indeed,  be 
said  that  the  strange  throb  of  satisfaction 
with  which  we  human  beings  feel  ourselves  at 
the  bottom,  where  we  cannot  fall  lower,  or  be 
further  unmasked,  is  never  more  frequent  than 
when  we  read  Dostoievsky.  And  that  is  large- 
ly because  he  alone  understands  the  depravity 
of  the  spirit,  as  well  as  of  the  flesh,  and  the 
amazing  wantonness,  whereby  the  human  will 
does  not  always  seek  its  own  realization  and 
well-being,  but  quite  as  often  its  own  lacera- 
tion and  destruction. 


243 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Dostoievsky  has,  indeed,  a  demonic  power 
of  revelation  in  regard  to  that  twilight  of  the 
human  brain,  where  kirk  the  phantoms  of  un- 
satisfied desire,  and  where  unspoken  lusts 
stretch  forth  pitiable  hands.  There  are  certain 
human  experiences  which  the  conventional 
machinery  of  ordinary  novel-writing  lacks  all 
language  to  express.  He  expresses  these,  not 
in  tedious  analysis,  but  in  the  living  cries,  and 
gasps,  and  gestures,  and  fumblings  and  si- 
lences of  his  characters  themselves.  Who,  like 
Dostoievsky,  has  shown  the  tragic  association 
of  passionate  love  with  passionate  hate,  which 
is  so  frequent  a  human  experience? 

This  monstrous  hate-love,  caressing  the 
bruises  itself  has  made,  and  shooting  forth  a 
forked  viper-tongue  of  cruelty  from  between 
the  lips  that  kiss — has  anyone  but  he  held  it 
fast,  through  all  its  Protean  changes?  I  sup- 
pose, when  one  really  thinks  of  it,  at  the  bot- 
tom of  every  one  of  us  lurk  two  primary  emo- 
tions— vanity  and  fear.  It  is  in  their  knowl- 
edge of  the  aberrations  of  these,  of  the  mad 
contortions  that  these  lead  to,  that  the  other 
writers  seem  so  especially  simple-minded. 
Over  and  over  again,  in  reading  Dostoievsky, 
one  is  positively  seized  by  the  throat  with  as- 
tonishment at  the  man's  insight  into  the  laby- 
rinthian  retreats  of  our  secret  pride — and  of 
our  secret  fear.  His  characters,  at  certain 
moments,  seem  actually  to  spit  gall  and  worm- 

244 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

wood,  as  they  tug  at  the  quivering  roots  of  one 
another's  self-esteem.  But  this  fermenting: 
venom,  this  seething  scum,  is  only  the  expres- 
sion of  what  goes  on  below  the  surface  every; 
day,  in  every  country. 

Dostoievsky's  Russians  are  cruelly  voluble, 
but  their  volubility  taps  the  evil  humour  of  the 
universal  human  disease.  Their  thoughts  are 
our  thoughts,  their  obsessions,  our  obsessions. 
Let  no  one  think,  in  his  vain  security,  that  he 
has  a  right  to  say:  'T  have  no  part  in  this 
morbidity.  I  am  different  from  these  poor 
madmen." 

The  curious  nervous  relief  we  experience  as 
we  read  these  books  is  alone  a  sufficient  vindi- 
cation. They  relieve  us,  as  well  as  trouble  us, 
because  in  these  pages  we  all  confess  what  we 
have  never  confessed  to  anyone.  Our  self-love 
is  outraged,  but  outraged  with  that  strange 
accompaniment  of  thrilling  pleasure  that 
means  an  expiation  paid,  a  burden  lightened. 
Use  the  word  "degenerate"  if  you  will.  But 
in  this  sense  we  are  all  ''degenerates,"  for  thus 
and  not  otherwise  is  woven  the  stuff  whereof 
men  are  made. 

Certainly  the  Russian  soul  has  its  peculiar- 
ities, and  these  peculiarities  we  feel  in  Dos- 
toievsky as  nowhere  else.  He,  not  Tolstoi  or 
Turgenieff,  is  the  typical  Slav  writer.  But  the 
chief  peculiarity  of  the  Russian  soul  is  that  it 
is  not  ashamed  to  express  what  all  men  feel. 

245 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

And  this  is  why  Dostoievsky  is  not  only  a  Rus- 
sian writer  but  a  universal  writer.  From  the 
French  point  of  view  he  may  seem  wanting  in 
lucidity  and  irony;  from  the  English  point  of 
view  he  may  seem  antinomian  and  non-moral. 
But  he  has  one  advantage  over  both.  He  ap- 
proaches the  ultimate  mystery  as  no  Western 
writer,  except,  perhaps,  Shakespeare  and 
Goethe,  has  ever  approached  it.  He  writes 
with  human  nerves  upon  parchment  made  of 
human  tissue,  and  ''abyssum  evocat  abyssum," 
from  the  darkness  wherein  he  moves. 

Among  other  things,  Dostoievsky's  insight 
is  proved  by  the  profound  separation  he  indi- 
cates between  "morality"  and  "religion."  To 
many  of  us  it  comes  with  something  of  a  shock 
to  find  harlots  and  murderers  and  robbers  and 
drunkards  and  seducers  and  idiots  expressing 
genuine  and  passionate  religious  faith,  and  dis- 
cussing with  desperate  interest  religious  ques- 
tions. But  it  is  our  psychology  that  is  shallow 
and  inhuman,  not  his,  and  the  presence  of  real 
religious  feeling  in  a  nature  obsessed  with  the 
maddest  lusts  is  a  phenomenon  of  universal 
experience.  It  may,  indeed,  be  said  that  what 
is  most  characteristically  Russian  in  his  point 
of  view — he  has  told  us  so  himself — is  the  sub- 
stitution of  what  might  be  called  "sanctity" 
for  what  is  usually  termed  "morality,"  as  an 
ideal  of  life.  The  "Christianity"  of  which 
Dostoievsky  has  the  key  is  nothing  if  not  an 

246 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

ecstatic  invasion  of  regions  where  ordinary 
moral  laws,  based  upon  prudence  and  self- 
preservation,  disappear,  and  give  place  to 
something  else.  The  secret  of  it,  beyond  re- 
pentance and  remorse,  lies  in  the  transforming 
power  of  ''love;''  lies,  in  fact,  in  "vision" 
purged  by  pity  and  terror;  but  its  precise  na- 
ture is  rather  to  be  felt  than  described. 

It  is  in  connection  wnth  this  Christianity  of 
his,  a  Christianity  completely  different  from 
what  we  are  accustomed  to,  that  we  find  the 
explanation  of  his  extraordinary  interest  in 
the  "weak"  as  opposed  to  the  "strong."  The 
association  between  Christianity  and  a  certain, 
masterful,  moral,  self-assertive  energy,  such 
as  we  feel  the  presence  of  in  England  and 
America,  might  well  tend  to  make  it  difficult 
for  us  to  understand  his  meaning.  It  is  pre- 
cisely this  sort  of  thing  that  makes  it  difficult 
for  us  to  understand  Russia  and  the  Russian 
religion. 

But  as  one  reads  Dostoievsky  it  is  impossible 
to  escape  a  suspicion  that  we  Western  nations 
have  as,  yet  only  touched  the  fringe  of  what 
the  Christian  Faith  is  capable  of,  whether  con- 
sidered as  a  cosmic  secret  or  as  a  Nepenthe 
for  human  suffering. 

He  saw,  with  clairvoyant  distinctness,  how 
large  a  part  of  the  impetus  of  life's  movement 
proceeds  from  the  mad  struggle,  always  going 
on,  between  the  strong  and  the  weak.     It  was 

247 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

his  emphasis  upon  this  struggle  that  helped 
Nietzsche  to  those  withering  exposures  of  "the 
tyranny  of  the  weak"  which  cleared  the  path 
for  his  terrific  transvaluations.  It  was  Dos- 
toievsky's demonic  insight  into  the  pathologi- 
cal sub-soil  of  the  Religion  of  Pity  which 
helped  Nietzsche  to  forge  his  flashing  coun- 
terblasts, but  though  their  vision  of  the  "gen- 
eral situation"  thus  coincided,  their  conclu- 
sions were  diametrically  different.  For  Nietz- 
sche the  hope  of  humanity  is  found  in  the 
strong ;  for  Dostoievsky  it  is  found  in  the  weak. 
Their  only  ground  of  agreement  is  that  they 
both  refute  the  insolent  claims  of  mediocrity 
and  normality. 

One  of  the  most  arresting  "truths"  that 
emerge,  like  silvery  fish,  at  the  end  of  the  line 
of  this  Fisher  in  the  abysses  is  the  "truth"  that 
any  kind  of  departure  from  the  Normal  may 
become  a  means  of  mystic  illumination.  The 
same  perversion  or  contortion  of  mind  which 
may,  in  one  direction,  lead  to  crime  may,  in 
another  direction,  lead  to  extraordinary  spirit- 
ual clairvoyance.  And  this  applies  to  all  devia- 
tions from  the  normal  type,  and  to  all  moods 
and  inclinations  in  normal  persons  under  un- 
usual excitement  or  strain.  The  theory  is,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  as  old  as  the  oldest  races.  In 
Egypt  and  India,  as  well  as  in  Rome  and 
Athens,  the  gods  were  always  regarded  as  in 
some  especial  way  manifesting  their  will,  and 

248 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

revealing  their  secrets,  to  those  thus  stricken. 
The  view  that  wisdom  is  attained  along  the 
path  of  normal  health  and  rational  sanity  has 
always  been  a  "philosophical"  and  never  a  "re- 
ligious" view.  Dostoievsky's  dominant  idea 
has,  indeed,  many  affinities  with  the  Pauline 
one,  and  is  certainly  a  quite  justifiable  deriva- 
tion from  the  Evangelical  doctrine.  It  is,  how- 
ever, none  the  less  startling  to  our  Western 
mind. 

In  Dostoievsky's  books,  madmen,  idiots, 
drunkards,  consumptives,  degenerates,  vision- 
aries, reactionaries,  anarchists,  nympholepts, 
criminals  and  saints  jostle  one  another  in  a 
sort  of  "Danse  Macabre,"  but  not  one  of  them 
but  has  his  moment  of  ecstasy.  The  very 
worst  of  them,  that  little  band  of  fantastic 
super-men  of  lust,  whose  extravagant  manias 
and  excesses  of  remorse  suggest  attitudes  and 
gestures  that  would  need  an  Aubrey  Beards- 
ley  for  illustration,  have,  at  moments,  moods 
of  divine  sublimity.  Nikolay  Vsyevolodovitch 
Stavrogin,  in  "the  Possessed;"  Svridigilaiof 
Dounia's  would-be  seducer,  in  "Crime  and 
Punishment,"  and  Ivan,  in  "the  Brothers  Kar- 
amazov,"  though  all  inspired  by  ten  thousand 
demons,  cannot  be  called  devoid  of  a  certain 
mysterious  spiritual  greatness.  Perhaps  the 
interesting  thing  about  them  is  that  their  elab- 
orate wickedness  is  itself  a  spiritual  rather 
than  a  sensual  quality,  or,  to  put  it  in  another 

249 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

way,  there  are  abysmal  depths  of  spiritual  sub- 
tlety in  their  most  sensual  obsession.  The  only 
entirely  base  criminal  I  can  recall  in  Dostoiev- 
sky is  Stavrogin's  admirer,  Peter  Stepano- 
vitch,  and  he  is  transformed  and  transfigured 
at  times  by  the  sheer  intensity  of  his  worship 
for  his  friend.  It  would  be  overpowering  the 
reader  with  names,  themselves  like  ritualistic 
incantations,  to  enumerate  all  the  perverts  and 
abnormalists  whose  various  lapses  and  diseases 
become,  in  these  books,  mediums  of  spiritual 
insight.  Though  dealing  continually  with 
every  form  of  tragedy  and  misery,  Dostoievsky 
cannot  be  called  a  Pessimist.  He  is  so  pro- 
foundly aflfected  by  the  spirit  of  the  Evangeli- 
cal "Beatitudes"  that  for  him  "poverty"  and 
"meekness"  and  "hungering  and  thirsting" 
and  "weeping  and  mourning"  are  always  in  the 
true  sense  "blessed" — that  is  to  say,  they  are 
the  path  of  initiation,  the  sorrowful  gates  to 
the  unspeakable  joy. 

The  most  beautiful  characters  he  has  drawn 
are,  perhaps,  Alyosha  Karamazov  and  Prince 
Myshkin ;  both  of  these  being  young  men,  and 
both  of  them  so  Christ-like,  that  in  reading 
about  them  one  is  compelled  to  acknowledge 
that  something  in  the  temper  of  that  Figure, 
hitherto  concealed  from  His  followers,  has 
been  communicated  to  this  Russian.  The 
naive,  and  yet  ironical,  artlessness  of  their  re- 
torts to  the  aggressive   Philistines   who   sur- 

250 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

round  them  remind  one  over  and  over  again 
of  those  Divine  "bon-mots"  with  which,  to  use 
Oscar  Wilde's  allusion,  the  Redeemer  bewil- 
dered His  assailants.  Stephan  Trophinovitch 
reading  the  Miracle  of  the  Swine  with  his  fe- 
male Colporteur;  Raskolnikofif  reading  the 
Miracle  of  the  Raising  of  Lazarus  with  his 
prostitute  Sonia,  are  scenes  that  might  strike 
an  English  mind  as  mere  melodramatic  senti- 
ment, but  those  who  have  entered  into  the  Dos- 
toievsky secret  know  how  much  more  than  that 
there  is  in  them,  and  how  deep  into  the  mystery 
of  things  and  the  irony  of  things  they  go.  One 
is  continually  coming  upon  passages  in  Dos- 
toievsky the  strange  and  ambiguous  nature  of 
which  leads  one's  thought  far  enough  from 
Evangelical  simplicities;  passages  that  are,  in- 
deed, at  once  so  beautiful  and  so  sinister  that 
they  make  one  think  of  certain  demonic  say- 
ings of  Goethe  or  Spinoza ;  and  yet  even  these 
passages  do  no  more  than  throw  new  and  for- 
midable light  upon  the  "old  situations,"  the  old 
"cross-roads."  Dostoievsky  is  not  content 
with  indicating  how  weakness  and  disease  and 
suffering  can  become  organs  of  vision ;  he  goes 
very  far — further  than  anyone — in  his  recog- 
nition of  the  secret  and  perverted  cruelty  that 
drives  certain  persons  on  to  lacerate  themselves 
with  all  manner  of  spiritual  flagellation. 

He   understands,   better    than   anyone   else, 
how  absurd  the  philosophical  utilitarians  are 

251 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

with  their  axiom  that  everyone  pursues  his 
own  happiness.  He  exposes  over  and  over 
again,  with  nerve-rending  subtlety,  how  in- 
toxicating to  the  human  spirit  is  the  mad  lust 
of  self-immolation,  of  self-destruction.  It  is 
really  from  him  that  Nietzsche  learnt  that 
wanton  Dionysic  talisman  which  opens  the 
door  to  such  singular  spiritual  orgies. 

Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  Dostoiev- 
sky's method  than  his  perpetual  insistance 
upon  the  mania  which  certain  curious  human 
types  display  for  "making  fools  of  themselves." 
The  more  sacred  aspects  of  this  deliberate  self- 
humiliation  require  no  comment.  It  is  ob- 
viously good  for  our  spirit's  salvation  to  be 
made  Fools  in  Christ.  What  one  has  to  ob- 
serve further,  under  his  guidance,  is  the 
strange  passion  that  certain  derelicts  in  the 
human  vortex  have  for  being  trampled  upon 
and  flouted.  These  queer  people — but  there 
are  more  of  them  than  one  would  suppose — 
derive  an  almost  sensual  pleasure  from  being 
abominably  treated.  They  positively  lick  the 
dust  before  their  persecutors.  They  run  to* 
"kiss  the  rod."  It  is  this  type  of  person  who, 
like  the  hero  in  that  story  in  "L'Esprit  Souter- 
rain,"  deliberately  rushes  into  embarrassing 
situations;  into  situations  and  among  people 
where  he  will  look  a  fool — in  order  to  avenge 
himself  upon  the  spectators  of  his  "folly"  by 
going  deeper  and  deeper  into  it. 

252 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

If  Dostoievsky  astounds  us  by  his  insight 
into  the  abnormaHties  of  "normal"  men,  he  is 
still  more  startling  when  he  deals  with  women. 
There  are  certain  scenes — the  scene  between 
Aglaia  and  Nastasya  in  'The  Idiot ;"  the  scene 
between  Sonia  and  the  mother  and  sister  of 
Raskolnikoff  in  "Crime  and  Punishment ;"  the 
scene  in  "The  Possessed"  where  Liza  leaves 
Stavrogin  on  the  morning  after  the  fire;  and 
the  scene  where  the  woman,  loved  by  the  mad 
Karamazov  brothers,  tears  her  nerves  and 
theirs  to  pieces,  in  outrageous  obliquity — 
which  brand  themselves  upon  the  mind  as 
reaching  the  uttermost  limit  of  devasting 
vision. 

In  reviewing  the  final  impression  left  upon 
one  by  the  reading  of  Dostoievsky  one  must 
confess  to  many  curious  reactions.  He  cer- 
tainly has  the  power  of  making  all  other  novel- 
ists seem  dull  in  comparison;  dull — or  artistic 
and  rhetorical.  Perhaps  the  most  marked  ef- 
fect he  has  is  to  leave  one  with  the  feeling  of  a 
universe  with  many  doors;  with  many  doors, 
and  not  a  few  terrifyingly  dark  passages;  but 
a  universe  the  opposite  of  "closed"  or  "ex- 
plained." Though  not  a  single  one  of  his 
books  ends  "happily,"  the  final  impression  is 
the  reverse  of  hopeless.  His  very  mania  for 
tragedy,  his  Dionysic  embracing  of  it,  pre- 
cludes any  premature  despair.  Perhaps  a  pro- 
found deepening  of  one's  sense  of  the  myster- 

253 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

ious  perversity  of  all  human  fate  is  the  thing 
that  lingers,  a  perversity  which  is  itself  a  kind 
of  redemption,  for  it  implies  arbitrariness  and 
waywardness,  and  these  things  mean  power 
and  pleasure,  even  in  the  midst  of  suffering. 

He  is  the  best  possible  antidote  for  the  pe- 
culiar and  paralysing  fatalism  of  our  time,  a 
fatalism  which  makes  so  much  of  "environ- 
ment" and  so  little  of  "character,"  and  which 
tends  to  endow  mere  worldly  and  material 
success  with  a  sort  of  divine  prerogative.  A 
generation  that  allows  itself  to  be  even  inter- 
ested in  such  types  as  the  "strong,"  efficient 
craftsmen  of  modern  industry  and  finance  is 
a  generation  that  can  well  afford  a  few  moral 
shocks  at  the  hands  of  Dostoievsky's  "degen- 
erates." The  world  he  reveals  is,  after  all,  in 
spite  of  the  Russian  names,  the  world  of  or- 
dinary human  obliquity.  The  thing  for  which 
we  have  to  thank  him  is  that  it  is  made  so  rich 
and  deep,  so  full  of  fathomless  pits  and  unend- 
ing vistas. 

Every  great  writer  brings  his  own  gift,  and 
if  others  satisfy  our  craving  for  destruction 
and  beauty,  and  yet  others  our  longing  for 
simplification  and  rational  form,  the  sugges- 
tions he  brings  of  mystery  and  passion,  of  se- 
cret despairs  and  occult  ecstasies,  of  strange 
renunciations  and  stranger  triumphs,  are  such 
as  must  quicken  our  sense  of  the  whole  weird 
game.     Looking  back  over  these  astonishing 

254 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

books,  it  is  curious  to  note  the  impression  left 
of  Dostoievsky's  feeling  for  "Nature."  No 
writer  one  has  met  with  has  less  of  that  ten- 
dency to  "describe  scenery,"  which  is  so  tedi- 
ous an  aspect  of  most  modern  work.  And  yet 
Russian  scenery,  and  Russian  weather,  too, 
seem  somehow,  without  our  being  aware  of  it, 
to  have  got  installed  in  our  brains.  Dostoiev- 
sky does  it  incidentally,  by  innumerable  little 
side-touches  and  passing  allusions,  but  the  gen- 
eral effect  remains  in  one's  mind  with  extraor- 
dinary intimacy.  The  great  Russian  cities  in 
Summer  and  Winter,  their  bridges,  rivers, 
squares,  and  crowded  tenements;  the  quaint 
Provincial  towns  and  wayside  villages;  the 
desolate  outskirts  of  half-deserted  suburbs; 
and,  beyond  them  all,  the  feeling  of  the  vast, 
melancholy  plains,  crossed  by  lonely  roads; 
such  things,  associated  in  detail  after  detail 
with  the  passions  or  sorrows  of  the  persons  in- 
volved, recur  as  inveterately  to  the  memory  as 
the  scenes  and  weather  of  our  own  personal 
adventures.  It  is  not  the  self-conscious  art  of 
a  Loti  or  a  D'Annunzio;  it  is  that  much  more 
penetrating  and  imaginative  suggestiveness 
which  arrests  us  by  its  vague  beauty  and  terror 
in  Lear  or  Macbeth.  This  subtle  inter-pene- 
tration between  humanity  and  the  familiar 
Stage  of  its  "exits  and  entrances"  is  only  one 
portion  of  the  weight  of  "cosmic"  destiny — 
one  can  use  no  other  word — which  bears  so 


255 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

heavily  upon  us  as  we  read  these  books.  In 
other  writers  one  feels  that  when  one  has  gone 
"full  circle"  with  the  principal  characters,  and 
has  noted  the  "descriptive  setting,"  all  has 
been  done.  Here,  as  in  Aeschylus  and  Eurip- 
ides, as  in  Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  one  is  left 
with  an  intimation  of  the  clash  of  forces  be- 
yond and  below  humanity,  beyond  and  below 
nature.  One  stands  at  the  brink  of  things  un- 
spoken and  unspeakable.  One  "sees  the  chil- 
dren sport  upon  the  shore,  and  hears  the 
mighty  waters  rolling  evermore." 

In  ordinary  life  we  are  led,  and  rightly  led 
— what  else  can  we  do? — this  way  and  that  by 
personal  feeling  and  taste  and  experience.  We 
fight  for  Religion  or  fight  against  Religion. 
We  fight  for  Morality  or  fight  against  Moral- 
ity. We  are  Traditionalists  or  Rebels,  Reac- 
tionaries or  Revolutionaries.  Only  sometimes, 
in  the  fury  of  our  Faith  and  our  Un-Faith, 
there  come,  blown  across  the  world-margins, 
whispers  and  hints  of  undreamed  of  secrets, 
of  unformulated  hopes.  Then  it  is  that  the 
faces  of  the  people  and  things  we  know  grow 
strange  and  distant,  or  yield  their  place  to 
faces  we  know  not  and  things  "lighter  than 
air."  Then  it  is  that  the  most  real  seems  the 
most  dream-like,  and  the  most  impossible  the 
most  true,  for  the  flowing  of  the  waters  of  Life 
have  fallen  into  a  new  rhythm,  and  even  the 
children  of  Saturn  may  lift  up  their  hearts! 

256 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

It  is  too  fatally  easy,  in  these  days,  when 
machinery — that  "Star  called  Wormwood" — ■ 
dominates  the  world,  to  fall  into  a  state  of  hard 
and  flippant  cynicism,  or  into  a  yet  more  hope- 
less and  weary  irony.  The  unintelligent  cheer- 
fulness of  the  crowd  so  sickens  one;  the  disin- 
genuous sophistry  of  its  hired  preachers  fills 
one  with  such  blank  depression  that  it  seems 
sometimes  as  though  the  only  mood  worthy  of 
normal  intelligence  were  the  mood  of  callous 
indifference  and  universal  mockery. 

All  men  are  liars,  and  "the  Ultimate  Futil- 
ity" grins  horribly  from  its  mask.  Well!  It 
is  precisely  at  these  hours,  at  the  hours  when 
the  little  pincers  of  the  gods  especially  nip  and 
squeeze,  that  it  is  good  to  turn  the  pages  of 
Fyodor  Dostoievsky.  He  brings  us  his  "Balm 
of  Gilead"  between  the  hands  of  strange  people, 
but  it  is  a  true  "alabaster  box  of  precious  oint- 
ment," and  though  the  flowers  it  contains  are 
snatched  from  the  House  of  the  Dead,  one 
knows  at  whose  feet  it  was  once  poured  forth, 
and  for  whose  sake  it  was  broken ! 

The  books  that  are  the  most  valuable  in  this 
world  are  not  the  books  that  pretend  to  solve 
life's  mystery  with  a  system.  They  are  the 
books  which  create  a  certain  mood,  a  certain 
temper — the  mood,  in  fact,  which  is  prepared 
for  incredible  surprises — the  temper  which  no 
surprise  can  overpower.  These  books  of  Dos- 
toievsky must  always  take  their  place  in  this 

17  257 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

great  roll,  because,  though  he  arrives  at  no 
conclusion  and  utters  no  oracle,  the  atmosphere 
he  throws  round  us  is  the  atmosphere  in  which 
Life  and  Death  are  "equal;"  the  gestures  his 
people  make,  in  their  great  darkness,  are  the 
gestures  of  that  which  goes  upon  its  way,  be- 
yond Good  and  beyond  Evil! 

Dostoievsky  is  more  than  an  artist.  He  is, 
perhaps — who  can  tell  ? — the  founder  of  a  new 
religion.  And  yet  the  religion  he  "founds"  is 
a  religion  which  has  been  about  us  for  more 
years  than  human  history  can  count.  He, 
more  than  anyone,  makes  palpable  and  near — 
too  palpable — O  Christ!  The  terror  of  it! — 
that  shadowy,  monstrous  weight  of  oppressive 
darkness,  through  which  w^e  signal  to  each 
other  from  our  separate  Hells.  It  sways  and 
wavers,  it  gathers  and  re-gathers,  it  thickens 
and  deepens,  it  lifts  and  sinks,  and  we  know  all 
the  while  that  it  is  the  Thing  we  ourselves  have 
made,  and  the  intolerable  whispers  whereof  it 
is  full  are  the  children  of  our  own  thoughts, 
of  our  lusts,  of  our  fears,  of  our  terrible  crea- 
tive dreams. 

Dostoievsky's  books  seem,  as  one  handles 
them,  to  flow  mysteriously  together  into  one 
book,  and  this  book  is  the  book  of  the  Last 
Judgment.  The  great  obscure  Land  he  leads 
us  over,  so  full  of  desolate  marshes,  and  for- 
lorn spaces,  and  hemlock-roots,  and  drowned 
tree-trunks,  and  Golgothas  of  broken  shards 

258 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

and  unutterable  refuse,  is  the  Land  of  those 
visions  which  are  our  inmost  selves,  and  for 
which  we  are  anszverable  and  none  else. 

Across  this  Land  we  wander,  feeling  for 
some  fingers,  cold  and  dead  as  our  own,  to 
share  that  terror  with,  and,  it  may  be,  finding 
none,  for  as  we  have  groped  forward  we  have 
been  pitiless  in  the  darkness,  and,  half-dead 
ourselves,  have  trodden  the  dead  down,  and 
the  dead  are  those  who  cannot  forgive;  for 
murdered  "love"  has  no  heart  wherewith  it 
should  forgive: — Will  the  Christ  never  come? 


259 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

NE  does  not  feel,  by  any  means,  that 
the  last  word  has  been  uttered  upon 
this  great  artist.  Has  attention 
been  called,  for  instance,  to  the  sar- 
donic cynicism  which  underlies  his  most  thrill- 
ing efifects?  Poe's  cynicism  is  itself  a  very 
fascinating  pathological  subject.  It  is  an  elab- 
orate thing,  compounded  of  many  strange  ele- 
ments. There  is  a  certain  dark,  wilful  melan- 
choly in  it  that  turns  with  loathing  from  all 
human  comfort.  There  is  also  contempt  in  it, 
and  savage  derision.  There  is  also  in  it  a 
quality  of  mood  that  I  prefer  to  call  Satiirnian 
— the  mood  of  those  born  under  the  planet 
Saturn.  There  is  cruelty  in  it,  too,  and  volup- 
tuous cruelty,  though  cold,  reserved,  and  evas- 
ive. It  is  this  "cynicism"  of  his  which  makes 
it  possible  for  him  to  introduce  into  his  poetry 
— it  is  of  his  poetry  that  I  wish  to  speak — a 
certain  colloquial  salt,  pungent  and  acrid,  and 
with  the  smell  of  the  tomb  about  it.  It  is  col- 
loquialism; but  it  is  such  colloquialism  as 
ghosts  or  vampires  would  use. 

Poe  remains — that  has  been  already  said, 

263 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

has  it  not? — absolutely  cold  while  he  produces 
his  effects.  There  is  a  frozen  contempt  indi- 
cated in  every  line  he  writes  for  the  poor  facile 
artists  "who  speak  with  tears."  Yet  the 
moods  through  which  his  Annabels  and  Li- 
geias  and  Ulalumes  lead  us  are  moods  he  must 
surely  himself  have  known.  Yes,  he  knew 
them;  but  they  were,  so  to  speak,  so  com- 
pletely the  atmosphere  he  lived  in  that  there 
was  no  need  for  him  to  be  carried  out  of  him- 
self when  he  wrote  of  them;  no  need  for  any- 
thing but  icy,  pitiless  transcription.  Has  it 
been  noticed  how  inhumanly  immoral  this 
great  poet  is?  Not  because  he  drank  wine 
or  took  drugs.  All  that  has  been  exaggerated, 
and,  anyway,  what  does  it  matter  now?  But 
in  a  much  deeper  and  more  deadly  sense.  It 
is  strange!  The  world  makes  such  odd  blun- 
ders. It  seems  possessed  of  the  idea  that  ab- 
surd amorous  scamps  like  Casanova  reach  the 
bottom  of  wickedness.  They  do  not  even  ap- 
proach it.  Intrinsically  they  are  quite  stupidly 
"good."  Then,  again,  Byron  is  supposed  to 
have  been  a  wicked  man.  He  himself  aspired 
to  be  nothing  less.  But  he  was  everything 
less.  He  was  a  great,  greedy,  selfish,  swag- 
gering, magnanimous  infant!  Oscar  Wilde  is 
generally  regarded  as  something  short  of  "the 
just  man  made  perfect,"  but  his  simple,  baby- 
ish passion  for  touching  pretty  things,  toying 
with  pretty  people,  wearing  pretty  clothes,  and 

264 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

drinking  absinthe,  is  far  too  naive  a  thing  to 
be,  at  bottom,  evil.  No  really  wicked  person 
could  have  written  "The  Importance  of  Being 
Earnest,"  with  those  delicious,  parodoxical 
children  rallying  one  another,  and  "Aunt  Au- 
gusta" calling  aloud  for  cucumber-sand- 
wiches! Salome  itself — that  Scarlet  Litany 
— which  brings  to  us,  as  in  a  box  of  alabaster, 
all  the  perfumes  and  odours  of  amorous  lust, 
is  not  really  a  "wicked"  play ;  not  wicked,  that 
is  to  say,  unless  all  mad  passion  is  wicked. 
Certainly  the  lust  in  "Salome"  smoulders  and 
glows  with  a  sort  of  under-furnace  of  concen- 
tration, but,  after  all,  it  is  the  old,  universal 
obsession.  Why  is  it  more  wicked  to  say, 
"Suffer  me  to  kiss  thy  mouth,  Jokanaan!" 
than  to  say,  "Her  lips  suck  forth  my  soul — 
see  where  it  flies!"?  Why  is  it  more  wicked 
to  say,  "Thine  eyes  are  like  black  holes,  burnt 
by  torches  in  Tyrian  tapestry!"  than  to  cry 
out,  as  Antony  cries  out,  for  the  hot  kisses  of 
Egypt?  Obviously  the  madness  of  physical 
desire  is  a  thing  that  can  hardly  be  tempered 
down  to  the  quiet  stanzas  of  Gray's  Elegy. 
But  it  is  not  in  itself  a  wicked  thing;  or  the 
world  would  never  have  consecrated  it  in  the 
great  Love-Legends.  One  may  admit  that  the 
entrance  of  the  Nubian  Executioner  changes 
the  situation;  but,  after  all,  the  frenzy  of  the 
girl's  request — the  terror  of  that  Head  upon 
the  silver  charger — were  implicit  in  her  pas- 

265 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

sion  from  the  beginning ;  and  are,  God  knows ! 
never  very  far  from  passion  of  that  kind. 

But  all  this  is  changed  when  we  come  to 
Edgar  Allen  Poe.  Here  we  are  no  longer  in 
Troy  or  Antioch  or  Canopus  or  Rimini.  Here 
it  is  not  any  more  a  question  of  ungovernable 
passion  carried  to  the  limit  of  madness.  Here 
it  is  no  more  the  human,  too  human,  tradition 
of  each  man  "killing"  the  "thing  he  loves." 
Here  we  are  in  a  world  where  the  human  ele- 
ment, in  passion,  has  altogether  departed,  and 
left  something  else  in  itS(  place;  something 
which  is  really,  in  the  true  sense,  "inhumanly 
immoral."  In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  thing  de- 
void of  any  physical  emotion.  It  is  sterile,  im- 
material, unearthly,  ice-cold.  In  the  second 
place,  it  is,  in  a  ghastly  sense,  self-centered! 
It  feeds  upon  itself.  It  subdues  everything  to 
itself.  Finally,  let  it  be  said,  it  is  a  thing  with 
a  mania  for  Corruption,  The  Charnel-House 
is  its  bridal-couch,  and  the  midnight  stars 
whisper  to  one  another  of  its  perversion. 
There  is  no  need  for  it  "to  kill  the  thing  it 
loves,"  for  it  loves  only  what  is  already  dead. 
Favete  Unguis!  There  must  be  no  profane 
misinterpretation  of  this  subtle  and  delicate 
difference.  In  analysing  the  evasive  chemis- 
try of  a  great  poet's  mood,  one  moves  warily, 
reverently,  among  a  thousand  betrayals.  The 
mind  of  such  a  being  is  as  the  sand-strewn 
floor  of  a  deep  sea.    In  this  sea  we  poor  divers 

266 


EDGy\R  ALLEN  POE 

for  pearls,  and  stranger  things,  must  hold  our 
breath  long  and  long,  as  we  watch  the  great 
glittering  fish  go  sailing  by,  and  touch  the 
trailing,  rose-coloured  weeds,  and  cross  the 
buried  coral.  It  may  be  that  no  one  will  be- 
lieve us,  when  we  return,  about  what  we  have 
seen!  About  those  carcanets  of  rubies  round 
drowned  throats  and  those  opals  that  shim- 
mered and  gleamed  in  dead  men's  skulls! 

At  any  rate,  the  most  superficial  critic  of 
Poe's  poetry  must  admit  that  every  single  one 
of  his  great  verses,  except  the  little  one  "to 
Helen,"  is  pre-occupied  with  Death.  Even  in 
that  Helen  one,  perhaps  the  loveliest,  though, 
I  do  not  think,  the  most  characteristic,  of  all, 
the  poet's  desire  is  to  make  of  the  girl  he  cele- 
brates a  sort  of  Classic  Odalisque,  round 
whose  palpable  contours  and  lines  he  may  hang 
the  solemn  ornaments  of  the  Dead — of  the 
Dead  to  whom  his  soul  turns,  even  while  em- 
bracing the  living!  Far,  far  off,  from  where 
the  real  Helen  waits,  so  "statue-like" — the 
"agate  lamp"  in  her  hands — wavers  the  face 
of  that  other  Helen,  the  face  "that  launched 
a  thousand  ships,  and  burnt  the  topless  towers 
of  Ilium." 

The  longer  poem  under  the  same  title,  and 
apparently  addressed  to  the  same  sorceress,  is 
more  entirely  "in  his  mood."  Those  shadowy, 
moon-lit  "parterres,"  those  living  roses — 
Beardsley  has  planted  them  since  in  another 

267 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

"enchanted  garden" — and  those  "eyes,"  that 
grow  so  luminously,  so  impossibly  large,  until 
it  is  almost  pain  to  be  "saved"  by  them — these 
things  are  in  Poe's  true  manner;  for  it  is  not 
"Helen"  that  he  has  ever  loved,  but  her  body, 
her  corpse,  her  ghost,  her  memory,  her  sepul- 
chre, her  look  of  dead  reproach!  And  these 
things  none  can  take  from  him.  The  maniacal 
egoism  of  a  love  of  this  kind — its  frozen  in- 
humanity— can  be  seen  even  in  those  poems 
which  stretch  yearning  hands  towards  Heaven. 
In  "Annabel  Lee,"  for  instance,  in  that  sea- 
kingdom  where  the  maiden  lived  who  had  no 
thought — who  imist  have  no  thought — "but  to 
love  and  be  loved  by  me" — what  madness  of 
implacable  possession,  in  that  "so  all  the  night- 
tide  I  lie  down  by  the  side  of  my  darling,  my 
darling,  my  life  and  my  bride,  in  her  sepulchu^ 
there  by  the  sea,  in  her  tomb  by  the  sounding 
sea!" 

The  same  remorseless  "laying  on  of  hands" 
upon  what  God  himself  cannot  save  from  us 
may  be  discerned  in  that  exquisite  little  poem 
which  begins : 
Thou  wast  all  to  me,  love, 

For  which  my  soul  did  pine; 
A  green  isle  in  the  Sea,  love, 

A  Fountain  and  a  Shrine 
All  wreathed  with  Fairv  fruits  and  flowers; 

And  all  the  flowers  were  mine! 
"dim  gulf"  o'er  which  the  spirit  hangs,  mute, 

268 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

How  well,  ill  Poe's  world,  do  we  know  that 
motionless,  aghast!     For  still,   in  those  days 
of    his    which    are    "trances,"    and    in    those 
"nightly  dreams"- which  are  all  he  lives  for,  he 
is  with  her;  with  her  still,  with  her  always; 
"In  what  ethereal  dances. 
By  what  eternal  streams!" 
The  essence  of  "immorality"  does  not  lie  in 
mad  Byronic  passion,  or  in  terrible  Herodian 
lust.     It  lies  in  a  certain  deliberate  "petrifac- 
tion" of  the  human  soul  in  us ;  a  certain  glacial 
detachment  from  all  interests  save  one;  a  cer- 
tain frigid  insanity  of  preoccupation  with  our 
own  emotion.     And  this  emotion,  for  the  sake 
of  which  every  earthly  feeling  turns  to  ice,  is 
our    Death-hunger,    our    eternal    craving    to 
make  zvJiat  has  been  be  again,  and  again,  for- 
ever! 

The  essence  of  immorality  lies  not  in  the 
hot  flame  of  natural,  or  even  unnatural,  de- 
sire. It  lies  in  that  inhuman  and  forbidden 
wish  to  arrest  the  processes  of  life — to  lay  a 
freezing  hand — a  dead  hand — upon  what  we 
love,  so  that  it  shall  ahvays  be  the  same.  The 
really  immoral  thing  is  to  isolate,  from  among 
the  affections  and  passions  and  attractions  of 
this  human  world,  one  particular  lure;  and 
then,  having  endowed  this  with  the  living  body 
of  "eternal  death,"  to  bend  before  it,  like  the 
satyr  before  the  dead  nymph  in  Aubrey's 
drawing,  and  murmur  and  mutter  and  shud- 

269 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

der  over  it,  through  the  eternal  recurrence  of 
all  things! 

Is  it  any  longer  concealed  from  us  wherein 
the  "immorality"  of  this  lies?  It  lies  in  the 
fact  that  what  we  worship,  what  we  will  not, 
through  eternity,  let  go,  is  not  a  living  per- 
son, but  the  "body"  of  a  person;  a  person  who 
has  so  far  been  "drugged,"  as  not  only  to  die 
for  us — that  is  nothing! — but  to  remain  dead 
for  us,  through  all  the  years ! 

In  his  own  life — with  that  lovely  consump- 
tive Child-bride  dying  by  his  side — Edgar  Al- 
len Poe  lived  as  "morally,"  as  rigidly,  as  any 
Monk.  The  popular  talk  about  his  being  a 
"Drug-Fiend"  is  ridiculous  nonsense.  He  was 
a  laborious  artist,  chiselling  and  refining  his 
"artificial"  poems,  day  in  and  day  out.  Where 
his  "immorality"  lies  is  much  deeper.  It  is 
in  the  mind — the  mind.  Master  Shallow! — for 
he  is  nothing  if  not  an  absolute  "Celebralist." 
Certainly  Poe's  verses  are  "artificial."  They 
are  the  most  artificial  of  all  poems  ever  written. 
And  this  is  natural,  because  they  were  the  pre- 
meditated expression  of  a  premeditated  cult. 
But  to  say  they  are  artificial  does  not  derogate 
from  their  genius.  Would  that  there  were 
more   such   "artificial"   verses    in   the   world! 

One  wonders  if  it  is  clearly  understood  how 
the  "unearthly"  element  in  Poe  differs  from 
the  "unearthly"  element  in  Shelley.  It  differs 
from  it  precisely  as  Death  differs  from  Life. 

270 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

Shelley's  ethereal  spiritualism — though,  God 
knows,  such  gross  animals  are  we,  it  seems 
inhuman  enough — is  a  passionate  white  flame. 
It  is  the  thin,  wavering  fire-point  of  all  our 
struggles  after  purity  and  eternity.  It  is  a 
centrifugal  emotion,  not,  as  was  the  other's, 
a  centripedal  one.  It  is  the  noble  Platonic  ris- 
ing from  the  love  of  one  beautiful  person  to 
the  love  of  many  beautiful  persons;  and  Irum 
that  onward,  through  translunar  gradations, 
to  the  love  of  the  supreme  Beauty  itself.  Shel- 
ley's "spirituality"  is  a  living,  growing,  crea- 
tive thing.  In  its  intrinsic  nature  it  is  not  ego- 
istic at  all,  but  profoundly  altruistic.  It  uses 
Sex  to  leave  Sex  behind.  In  its  higher  levels 
it  is  absolutely  Sexless.  It  may  transcend  hu- 
manity, but  it  springs  from  humanity.  It  is, 
in  fact,  humanity's  dream  of  its  own  transmu- 
tation. For  all  its  ethereality  and  remoteness, 
it  yearns,  "like  a  God  in  pain,"  over  the  sor- 
rows of  the  world.  With  infinite  planetary 
pity,  it  would  heal  those  sorrows. 

Edgar  Allen's  "spirituality"  has  not  the 
least  flicker  of  a  longing  to  "leave  Sex  behind." 
It  is  bound  to  Sex,  as  the  insatiable  Ghoul  is 
bound  to  the  Corpse  he  devours.  It  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  physical  ecstasies  of  Sex.  It 
has  no  interest  in  such  human  matters.  But 
deprive  it  of  the  fact  of  Sex-difference,  and  it 
drifts  away  whimpering  like  a  dead  leaf,  an 
empty  husk,  a  wisp  of  chaff,  a  skeleton  gos- 

271 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

samer.  The  poor,  actual,  warm  lips,  *'so 
sweetly  forsworn,"  may  have  had  small  inter- 
est for  this  "spiritual"  lover,  but  now  that  she 
is  dead  and  buried,  and  a  ghost,  they  must  re- 
main a  woman's  lips  forever!  Nor  have  Ed- 
gar Allen's  "faithful  ones"  the  remotest  in- 
terest in  what  goes  on  around  them.  Occu- 
pied with  their  Dead,  their  feeling  towards 
common  flesh  and  blood  is  the  feeling  of  Calig- 
ula. "V/hat  have  I  done  to  thee?"  that  proud, 
reserved  face  seems  to  say,  as  it  looks  out  on 
us  from  its  dusty  title-page;  "what  have  I 
done  to  thee,  that  I  should  despise  thee  so?" 

Shelley's  clear,  erotic  passion  is  always  a 
"cosmic"  thing.  It  is  the  rhythmic  expression 
of  the  power  that  creates  the  world.  But 
there  is  nothing  "cosmic"  about  the  enclosed 
gardens  of  Edgar  Allen  Poe;  and  the  spirits 
that  walk  among  those  Moon-dials  and  dim 
Parterres  are  not  of  the  kind  who  go  stream- 
ing up,  from  land  and  ocean,  shouting  with 
joy  that  Prometheus  has  conquered!  But 
what  a  master  he  is — what  a  master!  In  the 
suggestiveness  of  names — to  mention  only  one 
thing — can  anyone  touch  him?  That  word 
"Porphyrogene" — the  name  of  the  Ruler  of, 
God  knows  what.  Kingdom  of  the  Dead — does 
it  not  linsfer  about  one — and  follow  one — like 
the  smell  of  incense? 

But  the  poem  of  all  poems  in  which  the  very 
genius  Edgar  Allen  is  embodied  is,  of  course, 

272 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

"Ulalume."  Like  this,  there  is  nothingj  in 
Literature — nothing  in  the  whole  field  of  hu- 
man art.  Here  he  is,  from  beginning  to  end, 
a  supreme  artist;  dealing  with  the  subject  for 
which  he  was  born!  That  undertone  of  sar- 
donic, cynical  humour — for  it  can  be  called 
nothing  else — which  grins  at  us  in  the  back- 
ground like  the  grin  of  a  Skull;  how  extraor- 
dinarily characteristic  it  is!  And  the  touches 
of  "infernal  colloquialism,"  so  deliberately 
fitted  in,  and  making  us  remember — many 
things! — is  there  anything  in  the  w^orld  like 
them? 

**And  now  as  the  night  was  senescent. 
And  the  star-dials  hinted  of  morn, 

At  the  end  of  our  path  a  liquescent 
And  nebulous  lustre  was  born. 

Out  of  which  a  miraculous  crescent 
Arose  with  a  duplicate  horn — 

Astarte's  be-diamonded  crescent. 
Distinct  with  its  duplicate  horn!" 
"And  I  said" — but  let  us  pass  to  his  Com- 
panion. The  cruelty  of  this  conversation  with 
"Psyche"  is  a  thing  that  may  well  make  us 
shudder.  The  implication  is,  of  course,  double. 
Psyche  is  his  own  soul;  the  soul  in  him  which 
would  live,  and  grow,  and  change,  and  know 
the  "Vita  Nuova."  She  is  also  "the  Compan- 
ion," to  whom  he  has  turned  for  consolation. 
She  is  the  Second  One,  the  Other  One,  in 
w^hose  living  caresses  he  would  forget,  if  it 

18  273 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

might  be,  that  which  lies  down  there  in  the 
darkness ! 

"Then  Psyche,  uphfting  her  finger, 
Said,  "sadly  this  star  I  mistrust, 
Its  pallor  I  strangely  mistrust. 
O  hasten!    O  let  us  not  linger! 
O  fly!     Let  us  fly!  for  we  must"!" 
Thus  the  Companion;  thus  the  Comrade;  thus 
the  "Vita  Nuova" ! 

Now  mark  what  follows: 
"Then  1  pacified  Psyche  and  kissed  her, 
And  tempted  her  out  of  her  gloom. 
And  conquered  her  scruples  and  gloom. 
And  we  passed  to  the  end  of  a  Vista, 
But  were  stopped  by  the  door  of  a  Tomb. 
By  the  door  of  a  Legended  Tomb, 
And  I  said :    'What  is  written,  sweet  sister, 
On  the  door  of  this  legended  Tomb  ?' 
She  replied,  Ulalume — Ulalume — 
'Tis  the  vault  of  thy  lost  Ulalume!" 
The  end  of  the  poem  is  like  the  beginning, 
and   who   can    utter    the    feelings    it   excites? 
That   "dark   tarn   of   Auber,"    those   "Ghoul- 
haunted   woodlands    of   Weir"    convey,    more 
thrillingly  than  a  thousand  words  of  descrip- 
tion, what  we  have  actually  felt,  long  ago,  far 
off,  in  that  strange  country  of  our  forbidden 
dreams. 

What  a  master  he  is !  And  if  you  ask  about 
his  "philosophy  of  life,"  let  the  Conqueror 
Worm  make  answer: 


274 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

"Lo!  Tis  a  Gala-Night 

Within  the  lonesome  latter  years — " 
Is  not  that  an  arresting  commencement?    The 
word  "Gala-Night" — has  it  not  the  very  mal- 
ice of  the  truth  of  things  ? 

Like  Heine,  it  gave  this  poet  pleasure  not 
only  to  love  the  Dead,  but  to  love  feeling  him- 
self dead.  That  strange  poem  about  "Annie," 
with  its  sickeningly  sentimental  conclusion, 
where  the  poet  lies  prostrate,  drugged  with  all 
the  drowsy  syrops  in  the  world,  and  celebrates 
his  euthanasia,  has  a  quality  of  its  own.  It  is 
the  "inverse"  of  life's  "Danse  Macabre."  It 
is  the  way  we  poor  dancers  long  to  sleep. 
"For  to  sleep  you  must  slumber  in  just  such 
a  bed!"  The  old  madness  is  over  now;  the 
old  thirst  quenched.  It  was  quenched  in  a 
water  that  "does  not  flow  so  far  underground." 
And  luxuriously,  peacefully,  we  can  rest  at 
last,  with  the  odour  of  "puritan  pansies" 
about  us,  and  somewhere,  not  far  off,  rose- 
mary and  rue! 

Edgar  Allen  Poe's  philosophy  of  Life?  It 
may  be  summed  up  in  the  lines  from  that  little 
poem,  where  he  leaves  her  side  who  has,  for  a 
moment,  turned  his  heart  from  the  Tomb. 
The  reader  will  remember  the  way  it  begins: 
"Take  this  kiss  upon  thy  brow."  And  the  con- 
clusion is  the  confusion  of  the  whole  matter: 
"All  that  we  see  or  seem 
Is  but  a  dream  within  a  dream." 


275 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

Strangely — in  forlorn  silence — passes  before 
us,  as  we  close  his  pages,  that  procession  of 
''dead,  cold  Maids."  Ligeia  follows  Ulalume; 
and  Lenore  follows  Ligeia;  and  after  them 
Eulalie  and  Annabel;  and  the  moaning  of  the 
sea-tides  that  wash  their  feet  is  the  moaning 
of  eternity.  I  suppose  it  needs  a  certain  kin- 
dred perversion,  in  the  reader,  to  know  the 
shudder  of  the  loss,  more  dear  than  life,  of 
such  as  these!  The  more  normal  memory  of 
man  will  still  continue  repeating  the  liturgical 
syllables  of  a  very  different  requiem: 

O  daughters  of  dreams  and  of  stories, 
That  Life  is  not  wearied  of  yet — 
Faustine,  Fragoletta,  Dolores, 
Felise,  and  Yolande  and  Julette! 

Yes,  Life  and  the  Life-Lovers  are  enam- 
oured still  of  these  exquisite  witches,  these 
philtre-bearers,  these  Sirens,  these  children  of 
Circe.  But  a  few  among  us — those  who  un- 
derstand the  poetry  of  Edgar  Allen — turn 
away  from  them,  to  that  rarer,  colder,  more 
virginal  Figure;  to  Her  who  has  been  born 
and  has  died,  so  many  times ;  to  Her  who  was 
Ligeia  and  Ulalume  and  Helen  and  Lenore — 
for  are  not  all  these  One? — to  Her  we  have 
loved  in  vain  and  shall  love  in  vain  until  the 
end — to  Her  who  wears,  even  in  the  triumph 
of  her  Immortality,  the  close-clinging,  heav- 
ily-scented cerements  of  the  Dead ! 

276 


EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

"The  old  bards  shall  cease  and  their  memory 

that  lingers 
Of  frail  brides  and  faithless  shall  be  shrivelled 

as  with  fire, 
For  they  loved  us  not  nor  knew  us  and  our 

lips  were  dumb,  our  fingers 
Could  wake  not  the  secret  of  the  lyre. 
Else,  else,  O  God,  the  Singer, 
I  had  sung,  amid  their  rages. 
The  long  tale  of  Man, 
And  his  deeds  for  good  and  ill. 
But  the  Old  World  knoweth — 'tis  the  speech 

of  all  his  ages — 
Man's  wrong  and  ours;  he  knoweth  and  is 

still." 


277 


WALT  WHITMAN 


WALT  WHITMAN 

WANT  to  approach  this  great 
Soothsayer  from  the  angle  least  of 
all  profaned  by  popular  verdicts.  I 
mean  from  the  angle  of  his  poetry. 
We  all  know  what  a  splendid  heroic  Anarchist 
he  was.  We  all  know  with  what  rude  zest  he 
gave  himself  up  to  that  "Cosmic  Emotion,"  to 
which  in  these  days  the  world  does  respectful, 
if  distant,  reverence.  We  know  his  mania  for 
the  word  "en  masse,"  for  the  words  "ensem- 
ble," "democracy"  and  "libertad."  We  know 
his  defiant  celebrations  of  Sex,  of  amorous- 
ness, of  maternity;  of  that  Love  of  Comrades 
which  "passeth  the  love  of  women."  W^e  know 
the  world-shaking  effort  he  made — and  to 
have  made  it  at  all,  quite  apart  from  its  suc- 
cess, marks  him  a  unique  genius! — to  write 
poetry  about  every  mortal  thing  that  exists, 
and  to  bring  the  whole  breathing  palpable 
world  into  his  Gargantuan  Catalogues.  It  is 
absurd  to  grumble  at  these  Inventories  of  the 
Round  Earth.  They  may  not  all  move  to  Dor- 
ian flutes,  but  they  form  a  background — like 
the  lists  of  the  Kings  in  the  Bible  and  the  lists 

281 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

of  the  Ships  in  Homer — against  which,  as 
against  the  great  blank  spaces  of  Life  itself, 
"the  writing  upon  the  wall"  may  make  itself 
visible. 

What  seems  much  less  universally  realized 
is  the  extraordinary  genius  for  sheer  "poetry" 
which  this  Prophet  of  Optimism  possessed.  I 
agree  that  Walt  Whitman's  Optimism  is  the 
only  kind,  of  that  sort  of  thing,  that  one  can 
submit  to  without  a  blush.  At  least  it  is  not 
indecent,  bourgeois,  and  ill-bred,  like  the 
fourth-hand  Protestantism  that  Browning 
dishes  up,  for  the  delectation  of  Ethical  So- 
cieties. It  is  the  optimism  of  a  person  who 
has  seen  the  American  Civil  War.  It  is  the 
optimism  of  a  man  who  knows  "the  Bowery," 
and  "the  road,"  and  has  had  queer  friends  in 
his  mortal  pilgrimage. 

It  is  an  interesting  psychological  point,  this 
difference  between  the  "marching  breast-for- 
ward" of  Mrs.  Browning's  energetic  husband, 
and  the  "taking  to  the  open  road"  of  Whit- 
man, In  some  curious  way  the  former  gets 
upon  one's  nerves  where  the  latter  does  not. 
Perhaps  it  is  that  the  boisterous  animal- 
spirits  which  one  appreciates  in  the  open  air 
become  vulsfar  and  irritating  when  thev.  are 
practised  within  the  walls  of  a  house.  A 
Satyr  who  stretches  his  hairy  shanks  in  the 
open  forest  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  see;  but  a 
gentleman,  with  lavender-colored  gloves,  put- 

282 


WALT  WHITMAN 

ting  his  feet  on  the  chimney-piece  is  not  so 
appeahng.  No  doubt  it  is  precisely  for  these 
Domestic  Exercises  that  Mr.  Chesterton,  let 
us  say,  would  have  us  love  Browning.  Well! 
It  is  a  matter  of  taste. 

But  it  is  not  of  Walt  Whitman's  Optimism 
that  I  want  to  speak;  it  is  of  his  poetry. 

To  grasp  the  full  importance  of  what  this 
great  man  did  in  this  sphere  one  has  only  to 
read  modern  "libre  vers."  After  Walt  Whit- 
man, Paul  Fort,  for  instance,  seems  simply  an 
eloquent  prose  writer.  And  none  of  them  can 
get  the  trick  of  it.  None  of  them !  Some- 
where, once,  I  heard  a  voice  that  approached 
it ;  a  voice  murmuring  of 

"Those  that  sleep  upon  the  wind, 
And  those  that  lie  along  in  the  rain. 
Cursing  Egypt — " 
But  that  voice  went  its  way;  and  for  the  rest 
— what  banalities !     What  ineptitudes !     They 
make  the  mistake,  our  modern  free-versifiers, 
of  thinking  that  Art  can  be  founded  on  the 
Negation  of  Form.     Art  can  be  founded  on 
every  other  Negation.     But  not  on  that  one — 
never   on   that   one!      Certainly   they   have   a 
right  to  experiment;  to  invent — if  they  can — 
new    forms.      But    they    must    invent    them. 
They  must  not  just  arrange  their  lines  to  look 
like  poetry,  and  leave  it  at  that. 

Walt  Whitman's  New  Form  of  Verse  was, 
as  all  such  things  must  be,  as  Mr.   Hardy's 

283 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

strange  poetry,  for  instance,  is,  a  deliberate 
and  laborious  struggle — ending  in  what  is  a 
struggle  no  more — to  express  his  own  person- 
ality in  a  unique  and  recognisable  manner. 
This  is  the  secret  of  all  "style"  in  poetry.  And 
it  is  the  absence  of  this  labour,  of  this  premedi- 
tated concentration,  which  leads  to  the  curious 
result  we  see  on  all  sides  of  us,  the  fact,  name- 
ly, that  all  young  modern  poets  write  alike. 
They  write  alike,  and  they  are  alike — just  as 
all  men  are  like  all  other  men,  and  all  women 
like  all  other  women,  when,  without  the  "art" 
of  clothing,  or  the  "art"  of  flesh  and  blood, 
they  lie  down  side  by  side  in  the  free  cemetery. 
The  old  poetic  forms  will  always  have  their 
place.  They  can  never  grow  old-fashioned; 
any  more  than  Pisanello,  or  El  Greco,  or  Bot- 
ticelli, or  Scopas,  or  any  ancient  Chinese 
Painter,  can  grow  old-fashioned.  But  when 
a  modern  artist  or  poet  sets  to  work  to  create 
a  new  form,  let  him  remember  what  he  is  do- 
ing !  It  is  not  the  pastime  of  an  hour,  this.  It 
is  not  the  casual  gesture  of  a  mad  iconoclast 
breaking  Classic  Statues  into  mud,  out  of 
which  to  make  goblins.  It  is  the  fierce,  tena- 
cious, patient,  constructive  work  of  a  lifetime, 
based  upon  a  tremendous  and  overpowering 
Vision!  Such  a  vision  Walt  Whitman  had, 
and  to  such  constant  inspired  labour  he  gave 
his  life — notwithstanding  his  talk  about  "loaf- 
ing and  inviting  his  soul" ! 

284 


WALT  WHITMAN 

The  "free"  poetry  of  Walt  Whitman  obeys 
inflexible,  occult  laws,  the  laws  commanded 
unto  it  by  his  own  creative  instinct.  We  need, 
as  Nietzsche  says,  to  learn  the  art  of  "com- 
mands" of  this  kind!  Transvaluers  of  old 
values  do  not  spend  all  their  time  sipping  ab- 
sinthe. Is  it  a  secret  still,  then,  the  magical 
unity  of  rhythm,  which  Walt  Whitman  has 
conveyed  to  the  words  he  uses?  Those  long, 
plangent,  wailing  lines,  broken  by  little  gurgl- 
ing gasps  and  sobs;  those  sudden  thrilling 
apostrophes  and  recognitions;  those  long- 
drawn  flute-notes;  those  resounding  sea- 
trumpets;  all  such  effects  have  their  place  in 
the  great  orchestral  symphony  he  conducts ! 

Take  that  little  poem — quite  spoiled  before 
the  end  by  a  horrible  bit  of  democratic  vulgar- 
ity— which  begins: 

"Come,  I  will  build  a  Continent  indissoluble; 
I  will  make  the  most  splendid  race  the  sun  ever 

shone  upon — " 
Is  it  possible  to  miss  the  hidden  spheric  law 
which  governs  such  a  challenge?     Take  the 
poem  which  begins : 

"In  the  growths,  by  the  margins  of  pond- 
waters — " 
Do  you  not  divine,  delicate  reader,  the  peculiar 
subtlety  of  that  reference  to  the  rank,  rain- 
drenched  anonymous  weeds,  which  every  day 
we  pass  in  our  walks   inland?     A  botanical 

285 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

name  would  have  driven  the  magic  of  it  quite 
away. 

Walt  Whitman,  more  than  anyone,  is  able 
to  convey  to  us  that  sense  of  the  unclassified 
pell-mell,  of  weeds  and  stones  and  rubble  and 
wreckage,  of  vast,  desolate  spaces,  and  spaces 
full  of  debris  and  litter,  which  is  most  of  all 
characteristic  of  your  melancholy  American 
landscape,  but  which  those  who  love  England 
know  where  to  find,  even  among  our  trim  gar- 
dens! No  one  like  Walt  Whitman  can  con- 
vey to  us  the  magical  ugliness  of  certain  as- 
pects of  Nature — the  bleak,  stunted,  God-for- 
saken things ;  the  murky  pools  where  the  grey 
leaves  fall;  the  dead  reeds  where  the  wind 
whistles  no  sweet  fairy  tunes;  the  unspeakable 
margins  of  murderous  floods ;  the  tangled  sea- 
drift,  scurfed  with  scum ;  the  black  sea-winrow 
of  broken  shells  and  dead  fishes'  scales;  the 
roots  of  willow  trees  in  moonlit  places  cry- 
ing out  for  demon-lovers;  the  long,  moaning 
grass  that  grows  outside  the  walls  of  prisons ; 
the  leprous  mosses  that  cover  paupers'  graves ; 
the  mountainous  wastes  and  blighted  marsh- 
lands which  only  unknown  wild-birds  ever 
touch  with  their  flying  wings,  and  of  which 
madmen  dream — these  are  the  things,  the 
Ugly,  terrible  things,  that  this  great  optimist 
turns  into  poetry.  "Yo  honk!"  cries  the  wild 
goose,  as  it  crosses  the  midnight  sky.  Others 
may  miss  that  mad-tossed  shadow,  that  heart- 

286 


WALT  WHITMAN 

breaking  defiance — but  from  amid  the  drift  of 
leaves  by  the  roadside,  this  bearded  Fakir  of 
Outcasts  has  caught  its  meaning;  has  heard, 
and  given  it  its  answer. 

Ah,  gentle  and  tender  reader;  thou  whose 
heart,  it  may  be  has  never  cried  all  night  for 
what  it  must  not  name,  did  vou  think  Swin- 
burne  or  Byron  were  the  poets  of  "love"? 
Perhaps  you  do  not  know  that  the  only  "short 
story"  on  the  title-page  of  which  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant found  it  in  him  to  write  that  zvord  is 
a  story  about  the  wild  things  we  go  out  to 
kill? 

Walt  Whitman,  too,  does  not  confine  his 
notions  of  love  to  normal  human  coquetries. 
The  most  devastating  love-cry  ever  uttered, 
except  that  of  King  David  over  his  friend,  is 
the  cry  this  American  poet  dares  to  put  into 
the  heart  of  "a  wild-bird  from  Alabama"  that 
has  lost  its  mate.  I  wonder  if  critics  have 
done  justice  to  the  incredible  genius  of  this 
man  who  can  find  words  for  that  aching  of 
the  soul  we  do  not  confess  even  to  our  dear- 
est? The  sudden  words  he  makes  use  of,  in 
certain  connections,  awe  us,  hush  us,  confound 
us,  take  our  breath, — as  some  of  Shake- 
speare's do — with  their  mysterious  congruity. 
Has  my  reader  ever  read  the  little  poem  called 
"Tears"?  And  what  purity  in  the  truest, 
deepest  sense,  lies  behind  his  pity  for  such 
tragic    craving;    his    understanding    of    what 

287 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

love-stricken,  banished  ones  feel.  I  do  not 
speak  now  of  his  happily  amorous  verses. 
They  have  their  place.  I  speak  of  those  des- 
perate lines  that  come,  here  and  there,  through- 
out his  work,  where,  with  his  huge,  Titanic 
back  set  against  the  world-wall,  and  his  wild- 
tossed  beard  streaming  in  the  wind,  he  seems 
to  hold  open  by  main,  gigantic  force  that  door 
of  hope  which  Fate  and  God  and  Man  and 
the  Laws  of  Nature  are  all  endeavoring  to 
close!  And  he  holds  it  open!  And  it  is  open 
still.  It  is  for  this  reason — let  the  profane 
hold  their  peace! — that  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
understand  very  clearly  why  he  addresses  a 
certain  poem  to  the  Lord  Christ!  W^hether 
it  be  true  or  not  that  the  Pure  in  Heart  see 
God,  it  is  certainly  true  that  they  have  a 
power  of  saving  us  from  God's  Law  of  Cause 
and  Effect!  According  to  this  Law,  we  all 
"have  our  reward"  and  reap  what  we  have 
sown.  But  sometimes,  like  a  deep-sea  mur- 
mur, there  rises  from  the  poetry  of  Walt 
Whitman  a  Protest  that  must  be  heard !  Then 
it  is  that  the  Tetrarchs  of  Science  forbid  in 
vain  "that  one  should  raise  the  Dead."  For 
the  Dead  are  raised  up,  and  come  forth,  even 
in  the  likeness  wherein  we  loved  them!  If 
words,  my  friends;  if  the  use  of  words  in 
poetry  can  convey  such  intimations  as  these  to 
such  a  generation  as  ours,  can  anyone  deny 
that  Walt  Whitman  is  a  great  poet? 

288 


WALT  WHITMAN 

Deny  it,  who  may  or  will.  There  will  al- 
ways gather  round  him — as  he  predicted — out 
of  City-Tenements  and  Artist-Studios  and 
Factory-Shops  and  Ware-Houses  and  Bar- 
delloes — aye!  and,  it  may  be,  out  of  the  pur- 
lieus of  Palaces  themselves — a  strange,  mad, 
heart-broken  company  of  life-defeated  dere- 
licts, who  come,  not  for  Cosmic  Emotion  or 
Democracy  or  Anarchy  or  Amorousness,  or 
even  "Comradeship,"  but  for  that  touch,  that 
whisper,  that  word,  that  hand  outstretched  in 
the  darkness,  which  makes  them  know — 
against  reason  and  argument  and  all  evidence 
— that  they  may  hope  still — for  the  Impossible 
is  true! 


19  289 


CONCLUSION 


CONCLUSION 

E  have  been  together,  you  who  read 
this — and  to  you,  whoever  you  are, 
whether  pleased  or  angry,  1  make 
a  comrade's  signal.  Who  knows? 
W^e  might  be  the  very  ones  to  understand  each 
other,  if  we  met!  We  have  been  together,  in 
the  shadow  of  the  presences  that  make  life 
tolerable;  and  now  we  must  draw  our  conclu- 
sion and  go  our  way. 

Our  conclusion  ?  Ah !  that  is  a  hard  matter. 
The  world  we  live  in  lends  itself  better  to  be- 
ginnings than  conclusions.  Or  does  anything, 
in  this  terrible  flowing  tide,  even  begin  f  End 
or  beginning,  we  find  ourselves  floating  upon 
it — this  great  tide^and  we  must  do  what  we 
can  to  get  a  clear  glimpse  of  tlie  high  stars 
before  we  sink.  T  wonder  if,  in  tlie  midst  of 
the  stammered  and  blurted  incoherences,  the 
lapses  and  levities,  of  this  quaint  book,  a  sort 
of  "orientation,"  as  the  Theologians  say  now, 
has  emerged  at  all?  T  feel,  myself,  as  though 
it  had,  though  it  is  hard  enough  to  put  it  into 
words.  I  seem  to  feel  that  a  point  of  view,  not 
altogetlier  irrelevant  in  our  time,  has  projected 

293 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

a  certain  light  upon  us,  as  we  advanced  to- 
gether. 

Let  nie  try  to  catch  some  few  filmy  threads 
of  this  before  it  vanishes,  even  though,  like  a 
dream  in  the  waking,  its  outlines  waver  and 
recede  and  fade,  until  it  is  lost  in  space.  We 
gather,  then,  I  fancy,  from  this  kind  of  hur- 
ried passing  through  enchanted  gardens,  a 
sort  of  curious  unwillingness  to  let  our  "tixed 
convictions"  deprive  us  any  more  of  the  spir- 
itual adventures  to  which  we  have  a  right. 
We  begin  to  understand  the  danger  of  such 
convictions,  of  stich  opinions,  of  such  "con- 
structive consistency."  We  grow  prepared  to 
"give  ourselves  up,"  to  "yield  ourselves  will- 
ingly," to  whatever  new  Revelation  of  the 
Evasive  One  chance  may  throw  in  our  way. 
It  is  in  such  yieldings,  such  surprises  by  the 
road,  such  new  vistas  and  perspectives,  that 
life  loves  to  embody  itself.  To  refuse  them  is 
to  turn  away  from  Life  and  dwell  in  the  king- 
dom of  the  shadow. 

"Why  not?"  the  Demon  who  has  presided 
over  otir  wanderings  together  seems  to  whis- 
per— "why  not  for  a  little  while  try  the  experi- 
ment of  having  no  "fixed  ideas,"  no  "inflexible 
principles,"  no  "concentrated  aim"?  Why 
not  simply  react  to  one  mysterious  visitor  af- 
ter another,  as  they  approach  us,  and  caress 
or  hurt  us,  and  go  their  way?  Why  not,  for 
an  interlude,  be  Life's  children,  instead  of  her 

294 


CONCLUSION 

slaves  or  her  masters,  and  let  Her  lead  us,  the 
great  crafty  Mother,  whither  she  will?" 

There  will  be  much  less  harm  done  by  such 
an  embracing  of  Fate,  and  such  a  cessation  of 
foolish  agitations,  than  many  might  suppose. 
And  more  than  anything  else,  this  is  what  our 
generation  requires !  We  are  over-ridden  by 
theorists  and  preachers  and  ethical  water-car- 
iers ;  we  need  a  little  rest — a  little  yawning  and 
stretching  and  ''being  ourselves" ;  a  little  quiet 
sitting  at  the  feet  of  the  Immortal  Gods.  We 
need  to  forget  to  be  troubled,  for  a  brief  in- 
terval, if  the  Immortal  Gods  speak  in  strange 
and  variable  tongues,  and  offer  us  diverse- 
shaped  chalices.  Let  us  drink,  dear  friends, 
let  us  drink,  as  the  most  noble  prophetess  Bac- 
buc  used  to  say !  There  are  many  vintages  in 
the  kingdom  of  Beauty;  and  yet  others — God 
knows !  even  outside  that.  Let  us  drink,  and 
ask  no  troublesome  questions.  The  modern 
.puritan  seeks  to  change  the  nature  of  our  nat- 
ural longing.  He  tells  us  that  what  we  need 
is  not  less  labor  but  more  labor,  not  less  "con- 
centrated effort,"  but  more  "concentrated  ef- 
fort"; not  "Heaven,"  in  fact,  hut  "Hell." 

I  do  not  know.  There  is  much  affectation 
abroad,  and  some  hypocrisy.  Puritans  were 
ever  addicted  to  hypocrisy.  But  because  of 
these  "virtuous"  prophets  of  "action,"  are  we 
to  give  up  our  Beatific  Vision?  Why  not  be 
honest  for  once,  and  confess  that  what  Man. 


295 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

born  of  Woman,  craves  for  in  his  heart  is  a 
little  joy,  a  little  happiness,  a  little  pleasure, 
before  "he  goes  hence  and  is  no  more  seen"? 
We  know  that  we  know  nothing.  Why,  tiien, 
pretend  that  we  know  the  importance  of  be- 
ing "up  and  doing"?  There  may  be  no  such 
importance.  The  common  burden  of  life  we 
have,  indeed,  all  to  bear — and  they  are  not 
very  gracious  or  lovely  souls  who  seek  to  put 
it  off  on  others — but  for  this  additional  bur- 
den, this  burden  of  "being  consistent"  and  hav- 
ing a  "strong  character,"  does  it  seem  very 
wise,  in  so  brief  an  interval,  to  put  the  stress 
just  there? 

Somehow  I  think  a  constant  dwelling  in  the 
company  of  the  "great  masters"  leads  us  to 
take  with  a  certain  "pinch  of  salt"  the  strenu- 
ous "duties"  which  the  World's  voices  make 
so  clamorous!  Tt  may  be  that  our  sense  of 
their  greatness  and  remoteness  produces  a 
certain  "humility"  in  us,  and  a  certain  mood 
of  "waiting  on  the  Spirit,"  not  altogether  en- 
couraging to  what  this  age,  in  its  fussy  wor- 
ship of  energy,  calls  "our  creative  work." 
Well!  There  is  a  place  doubtless  for  these 
energetic  people,  and  their  strenuous  charac- 
ters, and  their  "creative  work."  But  T  think 
there  is  a  place  also  for  those  who  cannot  rush 
about  the  market-place,  or  climb  high  Alps, 
or  make  engines  spin,  or  race,  with  girded 
loins,  after  "Truth."     I  think  there  is  a  place 


296 


CONCLUSION 

still  lefl  for  harmless  spectators  in  this  Little 
Theatre  of  the  Universe.  And  such  spectators 
will  do  well  if  they  see  to  it  that  nothing  of  the 
(ine  or  the  rare  or  the  exquisite  escapes  them. 
Somebody  nuist  have  the  discrimination  and 
the  detachment  necessary  to  do  justice  to  our 
"creative  minds."  The  worst  of  it  is,  every- 
body in  these  days  rushes  off  to  "create,"  and 
pauses  not  a  moment  to  look  round  to  see 
whether  what  is  being  created  is  worth  creat- 
ing! 

We  must  return  to  the  great  masters;  we 
must  return  to  the  things  in  life  that  really 
matter;  and  then  we  shall  acquire,  perhaps,  in 
our  little  way  the  art  of  keeping  the  creators 
of  ugliness  at  a  distance! 

Let  us  at  least  be  honest.  The  world  is  a 
grim  game,  and  we  need  sometimes  the  very 
courage  of  Lucifer  to  hold  our  enemies  back. 
But  in  the  chaos  of  it  all,  and  the  madness  and 
frenzy,  let  us  at  least  hold  fast  to  that  noble 
daughter  of  the  gods  men  name  Imagination. 
With  that  to  aid  us,  we  can  console  ourselves 
for  many  losses,  for  many  defeats.  For  the 
life  of  the  Imagination  flows  deep  and  swift, 
and  in  its  flowing  it  can  bear  us  to  undreamed- 
of coasts,  where  the  children  of  fantasy  and 
the  children  of  irony  dance  on — heedless  of 
theory  and  argument. 

The  world  is  deep,  as  Zarathustra  says,  and 
deep  is  pain;  and  deeper  than  pain  is  joy.     T 

297 


VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

do  not  think  that  the}'  liave  reached  the  final 
clue,  even  with  their  talk  of  "experience"  and 
"struggle,"  and  the  "storming  of  the  heights." 
Sometimes  it  is  not  from  "experience,"  but 
from  beyond  experience,  that  the  rumour 
comes.  Sometimes  it  is  not  from  the  "strug- 
gle," but  from  the  "rest"  after  the  struggle, 
that  the  whisper  is  given.  Sometimes  the 
voice  comes  to  us,  not  from  the  "heights,"  but 
from  the  depths. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  if  the  clue  is  to 
be  caught  at  all,  it  will  be  caught  where  we 
least  expect  it ;  and,  for  the  catching  of  it,  what 
we  have  to  do  is  not  to  let  our  theories,  our 
principles,  our  convictions,  our  opinions,  im- 
pede our  vision — but  now  and  then  to  lay  them 
aside;  but  whether  with  them  or  without  them, 
to  be  prepared — for  the  Spirit  bloweth  where 
it  listeth  and  we  cannot  tell  whence  it  cometh, 
or  whither  it  goeth! 


298 


Publisher's  Announcement 

G  ARNOLD  SHAW,  Secretary,  University 
Lecturers  Association  of  New  York  begs  to 
*  announce  that  he  proposes  to  make  the 
Association's  work  of  more  permanent  value  and 
interest  by  entering  the  publishing  field.  I  he  plan 
is  to  issue  books  of  art,  literary  and  musical  criticism 
that  will  epitomize  the  conclusions  reached  in  the 
lectures  given  by  members  of  the  Association.  This 
work,  "Visions  and  Revisions,"  by  John  Cowper 
Powys,  the  most  briiiiant  lecturer  on  literature  of 
this  generation,  is  the  first  of  the  series  and  will, 
we  believe,  create  a  demand  on  your  part  for  the 
others  that  are  to  follow. 

YOUK  NAME  AND  OUR  MAILING  LIST 

We  suggest  that  you  send  your  name  and 
address  for  our  mailing  list  now,  so  that  we  may 
keep  you  in  touch  with  our  new  publications ;  you 
may  not  hear  of  them  otherwise  since  our  adver^ 
tising,  for  the  present  at  least,  will  be  confined  to 
circularizing  those  who  we  know  are  interested 
in  the  lectures  on  Literature,  by  John  Cowper 
Powys  and  Louis  U.  Wilkinson,  the  lectures  on 
Art,  by  1.  B.  Stoughton  Holborn,  the  lectures  on 
Music,  by  Thomas  NA^hitney  Surette,  and  the 
lectures  on  Philosophy,  by  C.  Delisle  Burns.  When 
sending  your  name  please  mention  the  lecturer  in 
whose  work  you  are  particularly  interested,  so  that 
we  may  send  you  the  complete  list  of  his  published 
works,  both  with  our  imprint  and  v\/ith  that  of 
other  publishers. 

G    ARNOLD  SHAW 

PUBLISHER  TO 

UNIVERSITY  LECTUKERS  ASSOCIATION 

1735  GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL,  NEW  YORK 


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